This time, Dust was expecting his brother. The anchore was hung with pennants, and everywhere flocked gorgeously gowned servants with hollow, scooped-out backs, so when they turned away you could see them from the inside, like the mold in which a person had been cast. They carried salvers and censers, platters and candelabra, everything as exquisite and enchanted as the servitors—and just as hollow. It was pageant, stage play.
A masque, because that was how the story went.
In the midst of all the exhibition sat Dust, or more precisely Dust's avatar, a Puritan magpie in his black frock coat and pewter weskit, his sealed pocket watch ticking in his gray-gloved hand. The chair he lounged upon was ebony, or the dream of ebony. He was a spot of glossy darkness surrounded by vacuous finery.
The symbolism pleased him.
He had been waiting only a fraction of a second—long enough, quite long enough, for an angel—when Samael materialized from a gyre of smoke and a shower of glitter. Still barefoot, affecting torn jeans and with his scarred chest shirtless, he glowered at Dust over crossed arms.
'What snaps an unblade?' he asked.
'I beg your pardon,' Dust answered. 'I am afraid I don't follow. A little context please?'
'What snaps an unblade? We've seen one snapped, haven't we? In the hand of the man in the passage that isn't supposed to be there. The passage no one remembers.'
'Rien remembered it. Will you stay for dinner, Samael?'
Slowly, Samael's arms uncrossed, as he no doubt considered whether he would get anything from Dust without playing along, and decided he wouldn't. 'Stage your puppet show then,' he said with ill grace, and stalked past Dust to the table. A chair materialized to take him; he seated himself, and scooted in.
As for Dust, he stood, spun his own chair, and reseated himself at Samael's right hand. Elbows on the table, he leaned forward, peering around the wall of Samael's hair. 'Surely you have time for entertainments,' Dust said. With a gesture, he ringed the table with more chairs, each of them uniquely archaic, one red-cushioned with a tasseled rope knotted across the arms.
Around them, hollow-backed waiters swayed and served and dipped and poured, a feast of roasted peacock and braised beef, with salats and subtleties and a dozen varieties of wine that vanished into smoke from the glass when the next was served.
Samael tasted none of it.
'What's the name of that unblade?' he asked.
Dust amused himself with knife and fork, a self-conscious burlesque of a dining man. He answered without raising his chin. 'Charity.'
He was prepared for the dead silence that answered him. But he couldn't quite prevent a smirk from curling the corners of his mouth upward. Really, he mused, chasing green peas up the back slope of his fork with the edge of the butter knife, all a smirk was, was what a smile turned into when you fought with it.
'Tristen,' Samael breathed—not an actual word, but a burst of processor activity so strong that Dust could read the resulting ionization disturbance in the air between them. And then he pushed his untouched plate away and said, 'You sent them that way.'
The peacock was succulent, bestowing a puddle of pinkish juice upon the plate in response to the pressure of Dust's fork; as well it should have been, as it was conjured from his memory of a thousand elaborate dinners, real and fictional. He sliced and tasted and sipped red wine. It was exactly like duck: nowhere in his memory was the taste of peacock recorded.
'Don't worry,' he said, to patent disapproval. 'No peacocks were harmed in the making of this dinner. And how could I have misdirected our gallant maidens, when your agents guided them? Agents whose introduction to the game I protested.'
'Who else would have remembered a forgotten passageway?'
'Rien remembered,' Dust said, again. 'Now, what about the unblade?'
'I asked what snapped it.' Samael shrugged. 'And you are not going to tell me.'
'Because I don't know.' Dust set his fork aside. With a wave of his hand, the plates vanished, the whole groaning table left stark and empty, without so much as a cloth to cover it. 'Fine,' he said. 'Have it your way. I can't tell you what an unblade shatters on. But I can tell you where it comes from, in the moving times.'
'So can anyone. They're what became of the autodocs, but now, they can only maim. Sever things that can't be healed, not even by symbionts or surgery. You've infested the whole ship with your medieval madness.'
Dust smiled. 'Not mine. Conn's. The Captain's word is Law.' Samael was staring at him with open speculation, and he realized he might have said too much. A subject change was in order. 'Shall I lay out the cards?'
Samael did not stop staring. 'It's not just fiction and history, is it, Jacob?'
Dust made a flourish in the air, his lace cuff falling across his glove. Between his fingers appeared a glossy oblong, a steel case embossed with a black enamel dragon. He cracked it open with a thumb and flipped the cards into his hand.
They were longer than a standard deck, though not much wider. The backs were plain black, the edges finished in silver gilt. They clicked like baccarat tiles when he shuffled them. 'Choose a card,' he said.
'Silence is as good as an answer, angel.'
'No,' Dust said, a token on the table to show willing. 'It's not just fiction and history in my memory.'
'It's people, too.'
'Choose a card,' Dust said.
Because they sat side by side, inasmuch as either of them
Irritably, Samael tapped one on the edge. 'Pull it out,' Dust instructed, and with ill grace his brother did. 'Rome burns,' Samael said. 'And you fiddle with card tricks.'
'Is Rome burning?' Dust's voice could not have rung falser, or more innocent.
Samael grunted and laid the card face up.
'Silence is as good as an answer, angel. Ah, the inverted Suns. The card in the first position represents the environment in which the query takes place, and the most pressing question.' Dust fanned his cards wider. 'Choose another.'
This time, Samael didn't bother with argument. He drew out the next card; Dust caught his wrist and guided him in placing it. It showed a man suspended upside-down in a cryo chamber, his wrists and ankles crossed. 'The Hanged Man,' Dust said. 'Life in suspension. That which does not progress. But also, a time of rebirth, of hard-won knowledge. This is the card that crosses, the thing that opposes. Choose a card.'
Samael did, and let Dust show him where to place it. His wrist felt cold and rigid; his avatar had no more depth of seeming than the hollow-backed servants. 'The Captain of Stars. There are six suits and six face cards in each, plus ten numbered ones. He is the root of the matter, the crux upon which the conflict rests. He is a man, or was one; a fiery and ambitious person, prone to quick action. His choices led inevitably to the situation we have now.'
'And that situation is?'
'The inverted Suns crossed by the Hanged Man,' Dust said, touching those. 'Tarot readings are like stories, you see—they have characters, conflict, action, climax, theme, and denouement.'
'What are the six suits?'
'Of course,' Dust said. 'You wouldn't remember. Memory is a spiderweb. It hangs in a corner and collects
