Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

  Perceval set her bowl aside, no longer hungry. "My, aren't we prophetic."

  "Don't be silly. No one can see the future." Whatever backflips Perceval's stomach was doing, Mallory ate with unperturbed determination. "I am a very good guesser, though." "And?"

  "And somebody in Engine has already tried to use you to kill your sister, and your aunt Ariane Conn at Rule, and everyone else therein. And might have in part succeeded."

  Mallory reached across Perceval's lap and stroked Rien's sweat cold cheek. This touch, Rien did not flinch away from. Perceval swallowed an acrid pang of jealousy. "Will she be well?"

  "I saved you, and you were sicker. It's fortunate you came upon me."

  Perceval liked Mallory better when the necromancer wasn't winking. "Or you came upon us. I ask you again, necromancer. Why are you helping us?"

  "Because I have no love for Engine," the necromancer said. "Nor Rule either. And less love for their wars."

  And then, while Perceval still stared, nibbling her lip in consideration, Mallory leaned forward and pressed pillowy lips to Perceval's own.

  Perceval had never been kissed before. Oh, yes, she'd kissed Rien, but that was not such a kiss as this. This was soft, and melting, Mallory's bony and elegant hand pressed to her cheek and a slick tongue lightly flicking her closed mouth. And Perceval had no idea how to react.

  She laid a palm against Mallory's chest, to hold her distance, and waited until the necromancer gently, so slowly, leaned back. Mallory's lashes flicked off pearl-white cheeks; Perceval had never lowered hers.

  "I'm sorry," Perceval said. "I am fallow, and sworn celibate. I cannot be what you desire."

  "Figures," Mallory answered, and leaned back with a sigh so honey-scented breath caressed Perceval's face. "I've been here alone a long time."

  In the branches of the tree above, the slumbering basilisk raised its head, crest ruffling. "What am I?" it asked, in injured tones. "Chopped tempeh?"

  10 all that heaven and none for thee

  And deep into her crystal body poured

  The hot and sorrowful sweetness of the dust.

  —EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY,

  "Oh, Sleep Forever in the Latmian Cave"

  Pinion told Dust everything, including his name.

  It was a good name, Dust judged, as Dust judged such things. He had never been able to name things himself—he was, after all, in chief a sort of archivist—but as with many archivists, a good irony and good pun delighted him.

  Take the name of the world, for example, half of which was half of Dust's own name. Jacob's Ladder. One thing that was many things, and a name most carefully chosen. Because Jacob's ladder was the ladder angels ascended to reach Heaven; and it was also the breaking of sun rays through cloud, planetside (not that Dust had ever seen such, but there were images in his memory); and it was a rope ladder, such as used to ascend into the rigging of a sailing ship; it was a fumbling primitive body modification that humans had performed upon themselves—and that , was significant, because humans were the only animals to mutilate themselves on purpose, or to direct their own evolution, although in those days the Exalt had been but a dream; it was a toy, an amusement; and in the name of the world, it was a promise and a benediction and an allegory.

  Because the Jacob's ladder in the name of the world was all of these things, and none. The ladder these angels must climb was the double helix. And then they would be God. They, who were splinters of God.

  God, who was dead. And what should be done about it, none of his splinters could agree.

  Dust thanked Pinion—it was childish and simple yet, but learning, and it could relate what it had seen—and then he began to discorporate.

  He knew where Samael's holde lay, and more than that he was certain he would not have to seek even so far. There would be outliers and sentries, and Dust's own self-stuff would meet up with his brother's before he sought too far.

  But if Samael could barge into Dust's house, Dust could barge into Samael's.

  He was strong, as strong as ever his counterpart. He would believe it. And he would believe as well that Samael needed him.

  Dust came apart and filtered through the world. And when he came to the house of Samael, he did not pause, not even to gather his courage. He rolled forward on a manufactured wave of high pressure, and he swept Samael's servants and fragments before.

  Samael's holde was a Heaven, as besuited the Angel of Life Support Services. And he was waiting when Dust arrived, already coalesced, arms crossed, wearing his green velvet coat and vast ragged raven wings.

  For a picosecond, Dust considered the rudeness of re fusing to take shape. He could hover over Samael, pluck at his limp blond locks, tweak the lace at his sleeves. He could make his displeasure known. It would be satisfying.

  But it would gain him nothing.

  With a sigh, he settled on a shape, and formed. Not a human shape and not the angel-shape Samael mocked, however.

  Dust made of himself a dragon.

  His wings would span the holde, if he unfolded them. His barbed and rebarbed head bent low on a black-mailed neck. He wore horns like an oryx and barbels like a catfish, and his breast was scaled in silver.

  He massed no more than a pony, but there was something to be said for psychological warfare.

  "A whole holde," Dust said. "All that Heaven, and only for your creature."

  "My creature?" Samael craned his neck back to see him, but showed no fear. A shape was only a mask, to be discarded upon an instant. Dust could well imagine Samael reciting that truth to himself.

  "Mallory," Dust hissed. "And the familiar basilisk. You sent my maidens to them."

  "My maidens? The world's maidens, surely. Do you begrudge them a little assistance, a little education?"

  "That is no Ben Kenobi. More une belle quelquesome-thing sans merci."

  "The question stands, my dearest Dust." When Samael uncrossed his arms, it was to stand hipshot, balanced on the toes of one bare foot and the heel of the other. He had simulated transparent silver toenail polish.

  Dust might have said that Samael lied, but in truth he had not, really. He had omitted, but by the most strict definition that was not providing false information. And that was what the ancient lingering protocols forbade them. The builders must never have imagined that the world might find itself not only fragmented, but wishing to lie between modules.

  "Yes," he said, because he had to say it. "I begrudge your assistance. And I begrudge Mallory."

  "Tough," Samael said. He stepped forward, bounced up on his toes, and planted a kiss on Dust's scaly cheek. "I know you want to be the last angel standing. But brother, so do I."

  Even if Rien awoke sore and sticky, it was a better awakening than the last. The wood was quiet. No birds sang, and the shade under the trees had deepened. A shadow panel must have crossed the suns, and the sudden cool twilight had awakened her.

  She reached out casually behind and found, not Perceval—whose lap she recalled falling asleep in—but the warm wooden neck of Mallory's guitar.

  Rien had never played such an instrument before. Her learning had been done on student pieces, plastic guitars suitable for a Mean. But this was real wood, not manufactured. It had a completely different tone.

  She was grateful in her bones to have been allowed to play it. And more grateful still that Mallory had seen fit to leave it by her while she slept. That hinted at offered trust, which Rien was in no position to turn away from.

  But what she wanted was Perceval.

  Carefully, Rien rolled onto her back. The ground was soft, but her hip hurt from sleeping on it. And the muscles of arms and legs, belly and back and neck, ached more. Something bound her sore left arm. She wondered how many days she'd lain ill. Perceval had recovered incredibly fast.

  But Perceval was Exalt.

  As she lay dizzy, staring at the canopy and waiting for it to stop whirling and breathing the buttery scent of almond blossoms (when you are drunk, Rien remembered, put one
foot flat on the floor, and she drew her knee up to press her sole against the blanket under her), she heard something deft and heavy beat away through the air. Gavin, she hoped, leaving to tell the others she'd awakened.

  Rien's heart beat faster. She worked her dry mouth; her eyes and lips were not very crusty, though.

  Maybe she had the strength to rise and find water.

  Maybe she wouldn't have to.

  Footsteps approached, soft and sure. They were not Perceval's, and Rien was surprised to find she knew her sister's tread already. She lifted herself on her elbows as Mallory's face hove into view, a pale oval nacreous through the gloaming.

  The necromancer dropped on crossed legs beside Rien, thumping into moss and leaf litter. Skinny, agile hands disarrayed the blankets and tugged Rien's arm free; watching their impersonal touch, she discovered that her arm was bandaged. There were tubes, needles, which Mallory slid out as deftly as Doctor could have, back in Rule.

  Rien almost thought, back home. But that was wrong, wasn't it? "Thank you," she said. "How long was I sick?"

  Mallory's face went briefly vague, as those of Exalts could do when they consulted their internal worlds. "Seven hours."

  "Oh. But I had the flu? The same flu Perceval did." Which had left her unconscious for half a day.

  "Perceval was weakened," Mallory said. "You were only hungry and tired."

  But Perceval is Exalt, Rien almost said, and bit her tongue just in time. She could already imagine the dexterity with which Mallory's arched dark eyebrows would rise, and the answer that didn't need saying.

  The funny thing was, the trees rustled when Mallory hesitated, though there was no breeze. Odd; the holde seemed large enough for convection currents, and the temperature drop should provoke circulation. But then, it was a strange wood, carefully managed, quiet and open and full of light. Rien dusted a fallen peach-petal off her cheek. Many of the trees, she thought, were ancient, their age-weakened branches supported by posts and strapping. "This is one of the old Heavens."

  "The first," Mallory agreed, unless it was a correction. Needles and tubes and whatever they had been connected to vanished into the ubiquitous pack, which rested beside the guitar for the time being. "Do you like the trees?"

  "They're beautiful. You care for them?"

  "There's only me," Mallory answered. Which made Rien wonder about Gavin. But perhaps as a colony construct, he didn't count as company by Mallory's standards. "They're a library."

  "A library?" Rien tilted her chin up again, gazing at the whispering branches. "An archive, you mean? A library of trees?"

  "A library of trees." Mallory looked up as well. "But we've lost the index. Here—"

  The necromancer stood and stepped away, feet indenting the loam. It was a tiptoe reach to bring down an apricot, soft and fuzzy and not much bigger than Mallory's thumb. When Rien put out her hand and Mallory laid it there, the brush of fingertips against the hollow of her palm made her stomach drop.

  Eyes on Mallory's, Rien put the still-warm, velour-skinned fruit in her mouth and sucked the flesh from the stone. It was sweet, sharp with overripeness, yet bland and a little gritty, not as juicy as she had thought it might be. She spat the stone into her palm, chewed the pulp, and swallowed.

  A whirl of music, a human voice, a shivering crescendo of drums and electric guitar. Rien sat transfixed by the music, old and alien and like nothing she'd heard before. She felt her symbiont accepting the new information, integrating it. Making it part of her flesh and her bone. It immersed and surrounded her, but even as she heard it performed, she sensed it as a gestalt, knew the notes and the chords. She could have played it, if her hands were sufficiently trained to the task. She could have sung it, if her voice were adequate. She could have rearranged it, resurrected it, reinvented it, if she had been a composer.

  A song, and she'd swallowed it.

  She found her way back, eventually. Her eyes stung with the beauty. A warm hand rested on Rien's nape. It was comforting, and it sent a shiver down between her shoulders. She swallowed and licked salt from her lip and tried to think what to say.

  "Do you live here alone?"

  "All alone," Mallory said, and kissed Rien on the mouth, lightly, full of questions.

  "I don't like men," Rien said, though she could not look away for a second from Mallory's eyes—blacker in the half-light than Rien remembered them from sun—-under the witchy mahogany frizz of bangs.

  "How fortunate for me that I'm not one," Mallory answered, and kissed Rien again.

  Rien fancied herself not uneducated in passion. She was sixteen; she had done her share of groping and kissing and more than kissing, in coffins and behind tapestries and even in beds. She thought she knew how it was done.

  She was not prepared for Mallory to pull away before Rien thought the kiss was half finished, quickly nipping Rien's lower lip and then pressing a finger against it. And then it was dark eyes, brown and transparent as coffee, with green and amber flecks swimming under the surface—and Mallory's breath across her mouth.

  "Wait," the necromancer said, and kissed her around that silencing finger. "Gently, Rien. It's not about getting it over with as fast as possible, my sweet."

  Rien nodded, to show she understood, then kissed Mallory's fingertip before she drew back. "Before we ... um. Is there someplace I could pee? I was asleep a long time, and ..." she gestured to the IV site in her arm, nothing but a red pinprick now.

  "Pick a bush," Mallory said, and dug through the pack to find a hand spade and toilet paper.

  Rien thought she could figure out what she was in-tended to do with both, and absented herself briefly to heed nature's call. When she returned, she found Mallory shaking out the pallet and folding the blankets into a neat rectangular pad. After divesting herself, Rien knelt and reached for Mallory's hand. They kissed again, and this time, she was softer, and tried to match Mallory's pace.

  As if in slow motion, Mallory lay back on the pallet, and drew Rien over. Rien pressed close, parting Mallory's thighs with her knee, turning her head and leaning a little aside so their breasts could nest together. Mallory made a noise into her mouth, and their tongues were warm and sweet together until, panting, they broke apart.

  "You're beautiful," Rien said, letting her fingertips just brush Mallory's cheek. Warm skin, and the flutter of a pulse beside the ear, begging to be kissed.

  "You're fierce," Mallory replied, and fingers in Rien's hair pulled her down again.

  And Mallory was right. Rien would have hurried it, left to her own devices, raced through, eager to know everything all at once. Instead, they kissed in the shadows, and Mallory's fingers found Rien's collarbone, and Rien's mouth found Mallory's throat, the little softness beneath the chin and the ringed hardness of the larynx. And then Mallory slid influential hands across Rien's shoulders, and the next Rien knew, she was on her back, the dirty tank top nuzzled upward and her dirty belly caressed. She stroked Mallory's hair, as she'd wanted to, felt it fuzzy here and ringlets there, full of tangles. She pressed down her hands; the bones of Mallory's skull were under it.

  And Mallory's hands were on her breasts, and she had to let go her grip and lift her arms as the necromancer pulled her tank off, and then kissed what there was to kiss. Mallory's erection indented Rien's thigh, and Rien expected to find it distasteful. But Mallory smelled right, and tasted right, and the skin was silk and satin under Rien's hands as she traced the lines of Mallory's spine and shoulder blades and the wiry muscles that defined them.

  Mallory's hands skimmed her hip bones, found the edge of her trousers—they were a mess now, ripped in two places, the hem torn ragged at the back—and slipped beneath. Rien stroked the necromancer's hair again. "You, too," she said.

  And then she met Mallory's eyes over the undulations of her own breasts and belly, and read the question in the necromancer's expression. "Well," she said. "You said you weren't a man. I believe you. Let's see it."

  "All this," Mallory answered, with a head sh
ake and a crooked smile, "and she also plays guitar."

  As Mallory knelt, Rien stripped off her own bottoms and kicked them aside. Mallory's trousers involved a belt and snaps; it took a little longer. And when they went down—Rien wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but a perfectly average erect penis wasn't it, not exactly. She'd been with boys—Head always said you couldn't say you didn't like something until you'd tried it—and this wasn't anything she hadn't seen before. Except where a boy would have a scrotum and testicles, Mallory had what looked just like girl parts behind.

  "Did you do it that way on purpose?" Rien asked, holding out her hand.

  "Of course," Mallory said. "If you hate it I can change."

  "Don't be silly," Rien said, and wrapped her fingers around Mallory's warm bony wrist. "I don't love you. You shouldn't change yourself for me."

  Mallory bent down and kissed her again, and this time there was no hesitating for clothes or negotiation, except the little sounds of question and permission they made that weren't—quite—words. Awkward, sometimes, and sticky, and Rien kept wishing she'd had a shower. But Mallory didn't seem to care, and by the time Rien pulled Mallory down and covered everything that she could reach with kisses, she was done with caring also.

  11 her own salt

  It rains into the sea

  And still the sea is salt.

  —A. E. HOUSMAN,

  "Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall"

  When the suns emerged from behind the shadow panel, the others came looking for Perceval. She was glad to see them. She was starving, and she'd spent the time while she was waiting—once she'd analyzed and bathed in a clean trickle that flowed through a cracked bulkhead—performing exercises and walking among the trees, which dusted her hair and the parasite wings with petals. Some of those petals were the basilisk's— Gavin's—fault; he paced her, flapping heavily from branch to branch, companionably silent.