He had taken on the task of calculating the modifications necessary to maintain the world's integrity when they caught the electromagnetic shock wave. If they caught the electromagnetic shock wave. Caitlin Conn and her people were working on that task, which was equally vital and slightly less ticklish. Ng was handicapped by outdated knowledge of the world; things had changed since he died. But that handicap was compensated for by a more complete knowledge than any of the modern Engineers. In the moving times, in Ng's time, there had been shipwide communication, and the angels had not been embattled.
He knew what was supposed to be there.
Still, he found the work stressful. And after Arianrhod's departure, their apparent coinvisibility meant that Rien was on her own with regard to refreshment. By the time Ng at last hit a snag in his calculations that wasn't amenable to a few moments of staring into space and flipping a light stylus, Rien suggested—no, it was her body, dammit— Rien enforced a walk.
Maybe they could find Benedick, and he could take them to get something to eat, and she could talk to him about reclaiming Tristen and then rescuing Perceval.
Them, Rien thought, her hand extended to the door release, and chuckled. She would never be alone again. Even if no one turned to see why she laughed.
The invisible girl.
She was willing to bet it was the dead Engineer in her head who made everybody so uncomfortable.
Conrad Ng expressed regret. Not really in words, more in a feeling of wry apologetic shame. Rien shushed him. It wasn't he who had forced the fruit upon her, and it was not he who had chosen to eat. While walking through the door, she looked down at her hands. And he certainly came in useful.
Samael, he suggested.
Behind it all, she agreed, smoothing her hands over the naked skin of her scalp. When her hair started growing back, she imagined it would itch terribly. Now, though, it reminded her of touching Perceval, and she did it again.
They—she—stepped through the door, and as Rien turned to ask the monitor where she might find Benedick, she nearly walked into him.
"We should work on your situational awareness," he said. "You nearly walked into me."
She looked up at him and managed not to say the first thing that came into her mouth. And then was startled that she'd even considered mouthing off to an Exalt. Not just to an Exalt.
To Benedick Conn.
"Were you coming for me?" she said instead.
And he smiled, half shyly. "I'm no use to the Engineers," he said. "Not until it comes down to tactics and command decisions. I thought I'd see if you were hungry."
She imagined she wasn't the only one who could hear her stomach grinding rocks. She turned to walk beside him, the press of traffic steering her close to his side. He took her elbow.
Something about the anonymity of all these people, the reaching city crawling up the walls on every side like creepers climbing for the light, made her bold. She stretched on tiptoe as they walked and said toward his ear, "How did you wind up selling your daughters for peace tokens?"
He flinched, his fingers tightening on her arm. And then he appeared to decide that she deserved an answer, because he said, "You're the reason Caitlin isn't speaking to me."
"I guessed," Rien said. "The dates matched. Was it your father?"
"He wanted a hostage," Benedick said. "That the balance of terror be maintained."
"May I assume you are not close to Arianrhod?"
It was a gamble even asking. But Arianrhod had said contract. And pretended affection so transparently that even Rien could see through her. And if she was such a crowning egoist that she'd name a daughter she never expected to see again with a portion of her own name, there was the matter of Ariane's name, as well.
"You would not be incorrect in such an assumption," Benedick said, after considering. "Of course I meant you to be raised as one of the family."
"In that house," Rien answered, "it's as well I was not."
He had been about to wince and dip his head, acknowledging her point, and she had been about to let him off the hook with a wry reference to Head. But she felt a tension come into him. Work on your situational awareness, he had said, and so she turned to follow the line of his gaze.
And tripped so hard Benedick had to catch her.
A coffle of resurrectees were led through the street, and Rien knew them. The one in the front, walking placidly, his glossy head bowed and his bright eyes half-lidded, used to be Oliver Conn.
"There's no way they got from here to Rule and back since we arrived," Rien said. "Somebody knew in advance, and was waiting to bring them back."
"Ariane must be behind the influenza," Benedick said. "It makes too much sense. She brings in Perceval; she incapacitates her brothers and sisters with illness and consumes as many of them as possible."
If Rien had not been standing beside him, she would have thought him unemotional at the death of his family, but she could hear the flutter of his breath, too fast. He glanced down at her, and she nodded at him to continue.
"She precipitates a war with Engine that she has no intention of fighting." His throat worked when he swallowed. "Like saving Tristen for later. She's like one of the angels: she's going to eat the whole family if she can get away with it."
"Not just Ariane," Rien said. "She had to have an ally here. Somebody with resources. Somebody who could make sure she ran into Perceval at the right time, in the right place, when Perceval was already sickening."
"Arianrhod," he said. He held her arm too tightly, as the dead man who had been Oliver shuffled past them without so much as a flicker of attention.
Rien bit down on a sob. Not for herself. Not for Arianrhod, who was a stranger, nothing to her, and the ties of blood irrelevant—though she might have felt differently, had she not encountered Benedick and Tristen and Perceval, and found a place to stand. "So, of course, she's going to impede anything we might want to do toward rescuing Perceval."
"How are we going to find out where she's being held?"
"Dust has her," Rien answered. "Hero Ng knows where to go to look for Dust."
She didn't say, we can't do this without Samael. Because Benedick knew it as well as she did, and she didn't want to say it out loud, as if that would make it real. Instead, Rien squeezed his fingers. "First we need to go get Tristen. And I need my things that I came here with."
"Right," said Benedick. "Let's find him."
It was Hero Ng who finally located Tristen, hacking into the medical computers while Rien thought uncharitably of Samael and his barbed gifts, and even less charitably of Mallory. How convenient, she thought, how freeing to be able to embrace the role of necromancer, trickster, betrayer. How it must release one from the bounds of common courtesy and right behavior. What a romantic series of excuses.
Maybe she, Rien, should become a sorcerer. Or an angel. Then she could be an asshole, too, and if anybody commented on it, she could shrug and present her union card.
Hero Ng, without quite interrupting the stream of cynicism, nudged her. She shook her head and pulled herself together, a little shamed. If it was bad for her, what was it like for him, trapped in a strange body, resurrected to deal with a crisis he'd been half glad to avoid by dying? He'd no more asked for this than she had, even if it was Mallory and Samael who had tricked them into each other.
She couldn't call Ng a coward. And she couldn't fail him by being a coward either. Nor could she fail Tristen, or Perceval, or even Benedick.
She let Ng show her the map. And sighed. "I don't know what we're going to do," she said. "We found Tristen" — she tried not to notice Benedick's worried glance when she said "we"— "but he's in a private ward. He's tanked."
"For a grown man," Benedick said, "he needs a lot of rescuing. All right. I'm going to have to talk to Caitlin."
Rien rubbed at her throat. "Would it be better if I did?"
"The least fun part of being an adult is facing your own mistakes." Benedick patted her shoulder. "But if she
won't hear me, then yes, you're on."
Rien sucked on her lip, unsure if what she felt was relief at being let off the hook, or outrage over being patronized. Maybe you could feel both at once.
Maybe you could feel all sorts of things, all of them mutually contradictory.
Rien said, "After you, Father."
The monitor lead them to Caitlin. One must be able to find the Chief Engineer. And Caitlin, to Rien's surprise, was immediately accessible. She sat in an office that was little more than a collection of chairs and interfaces, screens and keyboards and holographic panels bristling from every surface and each wall. The door was a slider rather than an iris, and it was open wide.
Caitlin Conn looked up when they entered, lips thinning. And she stared not at Benedick, but at Rien. Her left hand moved slightly, pinky and ring finger stretching as she blanked her screens, but not before Rien saw schematics of the Jacob's Ladder. And knew, through Ng, that they were in significant part completely speculative.
We have no idea, anymore, what the world even looks like.
"Chief Engineer," Benedick said, "I need to talk to you about our brother, and our daughter."
To her credit, Caitlin only nodded, and gestured them inside the door. It shut as soon as they cleared the entry, the sudden silence disconcerting. Rien found herself crowding back against the panel, which did not slide open from the pressure. Caitlin must have locked it.
Quickly, Benedick outlined their suspicions about Arianrhod and Ariane, while Caitlin steepled her fingers and listened. Rien had to admit, she was impressed by how well Caitlin listened. Active listening, intent and focused.
Rien found herself staring back, fascinated by the freckles on the back of Caitlin's hands, the ones speckling her face and hairline. Still, Caitlin's expression gave away nothing. Even when Benedick explained that they thought it was Arianrhod and Ariane, colluding, who had arranged for Perceval's maiming and abduction.
But when Benedick got to Tristen, she stopped him momentarily with an upraised finger, and Rien thought she checked something through her symbiont. Of course it could bring her any information she needed. The screens were merely a way of organizing, externalizing, and categorizing. Like writing lists.
"He should have been released," Caitlin said. "I'll see to it. Continue. Once you have him back, what then?"
"We're going after Perceval," Rien said.
"With Samael."
"I don't see a way around it." Benedick put his hand on Rien's shoulder, and she allowed him to take up the thread of conversation again. "We'll need an angel. And we need to choose an angel to support, if Rien—"
"Hero Ng," Rien corrected, and then blushed blue as she realized what she'd just done.
"Hero Ng," Caitlin echoed, "is correct that we'll need a unified A.I. to hold the world together."
"He is confident in his assessment. And he knows where Perceval is. Or he is nearly certain," Rien said, the phrasing not her own.
Caitlin seemed to know it. She smiled bitterly and stood, bouncing on her toes, radiating vibrant energy. She came around the desk. She wasn't much taller than Rien, but her arms and neck showed evidence of muscle. A black-hilted unblade bumped at her hip.
"I should stay here," she said. "And direct the preparations."
"And watch over Arianrhod."
She bit her lip. "I can have Arianrhod detained. And questioned. If you two are willing to stand surety."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning if she proves innocent, you could be sued for false accusation." Caitlin's hand rested, Rien thought unconsciously, on the unblade's hilt. Her thumb caressed the pommel. She turned over her shoulder and glanced at the blanked-out screens. "I wish we still had Susabo," she said. "That was a no-nonsense sort of angel. I'd back him over Samael."
"Was it Samael who killed him?"
"It was the stone that killed him. Or weakened him. But yes, it was Samael who ate what was left. And I couldn't defend him. So now we have Inkling, who is fierce, but small. As angels go. And we have Samael."
"And Rule has Dust?"
Caitlin shook her head, arms folded, head cocked to one side consideringly. "Rule has Asrafil. The Angel of Battle Systems. Or maybe Asrafil has Rule, and Samael has us."
"And Dust has Perceval," Benedick said, and Caitlin nodded.
"Yes," she said. "Come on. If we're going to choose, we need to be about choosing."
"I thought you were staying here," Benedick said.
Rien drew a breath. She hoped not. She wanted Caitlin to leap to the defense of her daughter.
"Making the ship ready for flight is a vital undertaking," Caitlin said, and Rien's heart fell, as it had fallen when she looked at Arianrhod and saw something about as genuine as the gift of sugar cookies. And then Caitlin uncrossed her arms, letting them swing from the shoulders, and continued, "So is retaking the command center. And there are a lot of Engineers here."
"Cat?" Benedick asked.
She looked up at him, not quite a glare but also not forgiveness, and said, "Let's go decant our brother."
26 the devil of the stair
There were no more faces and the
stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's
mouth drivelling, beyond repair.
— T. S. ELIOT, "Ash Wednesday"
Dust said, "The child is nothing. Ariane is coming, and with her, Asrafil. Accept me."
His captain of desire stood on the empty bridge, cloaked in her shadowbright wings, and ran her hands away from her heart on either side, stroking down the rail. The sound-absorbing carpet crumbled to powder under Perceval's feet, and only by standing very still could she stop the puffs of dust that rose at every step. Cobwebs clung to her fingers as she lifted them from the rail. Cobwebs, thick with dust, drifted from the rail where her touch had broken them free, and draped across the deck like veils. "This is your heart," she said.
"And it is bitter," he answered. She didn't laugh, just flicked her eyes at him curiously, turning her shaven head.
He could see the structure of her neck and skull in the visible light, and it was beautiful to him.
"I give you my heart," he said.
He walked his avatar into the center of the room—not vast, not by the standards of Dust, who contained multitudes—and turned in the light, his arms spread wide. The wind of his moving stirred dust and spiderwebs; the entire bridge was draped in their spinnings. Dust stroked a ragged web, his fingers parsing powdery softness where his other senses reported protein chains, crystalline patterns joined by amorphous linkages.
Perceval lifted her chin. The light from the bridge's single still-brilliant lamp cast shadows stark across her face. "I do not want your heart."
"Yes, you do," he said, because he could make her want it. "Don't lie to me, Perceval. It's demeaning."
She would not look at him. "Open the panels," she said. "Show me the suns."
He stood below her and looked up. Of course, while he was below, he was above and to each side as well, but sometimes when dealing with nondistributed intelligences, it helped to focus down and mimic their thought. He wondered if she knew she'd just given him a command, and what passed for his heart leaped.
He opened the panels, and let the light of the waystars in. They hung there, at the bottom of their gravity well, hearthfire and furnace and inferno.
"We never named them," Perceval said. "Just the way-stars. A and B."
"They were never meant to be permanent," Dust said. "Naming would have been a covenant."
"They could have called it Wheelbroke." Perceval smoothed her hands along the rail again. This time there were no webs to stick to her fingers. "It wouldn't be the first time."
Dust imagined the delight he felt at her wit was the sort of thing that would make a human lover burst into fond laughter, so he tried. But she only looked at him strangely, and folded herself tight in her wings, seeming to forget they were his wings as well.
"If you love something mor
tal," he said, "it will only destroy you. How much better to love the world—"
She shook her head, long throat working, and stared out at the suns. Dust could have told her everything she cared to know about them; his inward perceptions might be erratic and fragile, but the external ones were maintained and precise. He'd fought that war with his brothers centuries before, and they had divided up the spoils.
His captain of desire said, "Everything's mortal, angel. Even you."
"More mortal every minute," he said. With a thought, he dimmed the panels and brought up the screens. "In defying me, you know you are also killing Rien. And everyone else within my holdes and hallways."
Her jaw worked. She looked down, but it did not matter. Wherever she turned her eyes, he could project his images, even to the inside of her head if she covered her face with her hands.
He didn't have to go that far, though. Because once she saw what he had to show her, she was wide-eyed and avid. Because he had not lied; Ariane was coming, arrayed in her powered armor for battle, shields chattering and
289
sparking around her and her unblade black upon her hip. She climbed, or the armor climbed for her, from Rule and through the Enemy.
The waystars cast their light upon her. Her magnetic boots and gauntlets locked her to the skin of the world.
She was not alone. Asrafil walked beside her, in all his edgy frailty, his collar raised as if against the chill he could not feel. With a relentless determination, a strength beyond hope or despair, together they climbed the world.
Dust briefly admired their cleverness. Even if he could wrest a weapon from Asrafil's control, he could not shoot at Ariane. Not without risking his own metal skin. And even if he blocked her at the air lock, Ariane in her armor could tear her way inside.
"Open the gate," he murmured. "Throw down the bridge. Or it will go ill in the end for those within."
Perceval's hands tightened on the railing, paling across the knuckles, a blue flush visible between. The metal creaked under her grasp.
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