Dust

lost under the distressing sounds of the bats.

'It's all right.' And squaring her shoulders, Rien

walked forward. 'I invited myself.'

It was awful. Gavin did shed some light—just barely enough. And Rien could have done with less.

The guano sucked at her boots. She sank into it, and it fell all around them like a chunky, whispering rain, and bats disturbed by the glow swooped down to investigate. Whether they were dazzled or angry, some of them flew into Rien. After one such collision, Gavin shifted abruptly on her shoulder, and she heard a flutter and a crunch.

And then more crunching.

She did not turn to look. 'You're not.'

'Not what?'

'You're a machine,' she said. 'You don't eat.'

'Oh, very well.' He must have discarded the bat with a cranelike flick of his serpentine neck. Rien was glad she couldn't see it. In fact, she told herself, she might as well be blind in that eye. There was nothing to see.

Until something as big as a large dog lunged out and scooped up the discarded bat before vanishing again, back into the unrelieved dark.

Rien bloodied her lip between her teeth, but managed somehow not to scream. Behind her, Pinion's agitated flapping did them no favors with the bats; Rien shielded her head with both arms and half crouched, eyes squinched nearly shut. 'Shit. Shit. Shit.'

'Only to the ankles,' Gavin observed. 'It hasn't even pulled your shoes off yet.'

'Gavin,' Perceval said, with steely calm, 'what was that?'

'I don't know,' he admitted. 'Scavenger? It was humanoid.'

'That's reassuring.' Rien felt Perceval fold her parasite wings around them both, although Pinion was invisible in the darkness when Perceval damped its luminescence. They were still warmer than ambient, and Rien had no idea how that worked.

She took a breath. 'Hey,' she called out. 'Stranger—'

No answer. But somewhere in the darkness, she heard a sound she recognized from Head's kitchen; the sound of flesh stripped back from bone. And then there was crunching, and Rien gagged on the remnants of her own ' frugal luncheon.

'Space,' Perceval said, and then, 'Poor creature.'

Rien tried for human charity, but couldn't seem to get past nausea. 'How long do you think it's been trapped here?'

'Long enough,' Perceval said. 'We have to help.'

'He'll probably give you rabies,' Rien said, although there was no rabies in the world and never had been. They still learned about it in biology, though; some of its elements had been used to splice the inducer viruses.

Those were illegal now. In Rule, anyway. Not that Rien thought it would have any effect on the Conns if they decided to use them.

Beyond the border of the light, Rien heard gnawing.

'It's errantry,' Perceval said. 'You go where it takes you, and mend what you find that needs mending.'

Before Rien could remind her that they were on a quest a little more direct that errantry, Perceval had pushed past her. Cold air stroked Rien's arms where the wings had cupped. They floated over Perceval's back, now faintly luminescent and incredibly visible.

'Fuck,' Rien muttered under her breath, and—to the basilisk's apparent wing-flapping chagrin—picked her way over the moldy mounds of guano to take Perceval's hand.

Perceval spoke low, her voice humming on harmonics Rien found soothing. She blinked furiously, and would have shaken her head to clear it except whoever that was off in the darkness could see her, limned by Pinion's light.

She realized that she hadn't consciously processed a single word Perceval said. And Gavin, bizarrely, was huddled against her neck like a worried parrot, compacted down to half his previously apparent size. Whether he was collapsing his form or just sleeking himself down like a bird, Rien didn't know, but the implication that she was meant to protect him concerned her.

She concentrated on her eyes and let Perceval lead her forward across the sucking mess of the floor. It was warm and humid, the reek of ammonia unrelenting. Guano dripped in her hair, warm and sticky.

So much for clean clothes.

'Who the hell puts bats on a spaceship?' she muttered, expecting it to be lost under Perceval's chanted buzz.

'Insect control,' Gavin said against her ear. 'Eventual terraforming. And bat guano is excellent for hydroponics and traditional agriculture.' He was warm, which she wouldn't expect of a machine, and he fit just under the curve of her jaw.

And how does a hand tool that thinks it's a mythical animal know that? she almost asked, but decided against it as long as his talons pricked the hollow over her collarbone. At least he was keeping the bat shit off one shoulder.

Perceval moved forward slowly and Rien went with her. Now she saw the pale spidery shape crouched against the wall; it was hard, because he was streaked—coated— with the same filth that crusted every object. It served admirably as camouflage.

Other than a coat of guano, he was naked, and he held both hands folded before his mouth, streaked with blood up to the elbows. His hair, if it was hair, was a spiked, matted, dreadlocked mass gray with guano and stiff about his shoulders. His irises reflected Pinion's light, two flat glowing discs floating in the darkness.

He dropped the carcass of the bat, and Rien saw he had something else in his hand. Something short and flat, the part that was not enfolded in his grip about the size of Perceval's palm. 'Perceval, watch—'

The wild man lunged.

Perceval might have caught him, and Pinion might have stopped him. Perceval dropped Rien's hand and stepped half in front, and the wings darted forward on either side of her—but Gavin had already sprung off Rien's shoulder, two heavy wingbeats carrying him aloft.

The guano a few steps in front of the charging man sizzled, smoked, and exploded. Rien jumped back, skidded in shit, and managed to catch her balance by windmilling her arms at the cost of a strained inner thigh.

But she was looking at Gavin, his eyes open, glaring torch-blue in the darkness with the internal radiance of his colony. There was smoke and the stench of burnt ammonia, worse than the unburned guano—like boiling piss on the stove, Rien thought, gagging, as every bat in the world shot off the roof for the passage and the air was wheeling with pin-scratching, squeaking, sight-defeating animals.

'Laser-cutting torch,' she said.

The wild man had stopped. And as the bats cleared, Rien could see that he stood in the light, on the other side of the blasted patch, his right hand still upraised with what was now revealed as a broken blade clutched in it. Gavin hovered, his wingbeats stirring the air in the passage, his tail writhing behind him.

'I want to help you,' Perceval said, and this time Rien heard her clearly.

The man with the broken sword put his hands on his knees and doubled over, gasping.

13 the deck