dust. Until you need it to catch a fly. The six suits are Cups, Stars, Stones, Blades, Wires, and Voids.'
'Voids? Plural?'
'I know,' Dust said, with a sigh of irritation. 'But it wasn't me that named them. Choose a card.'
They went around the central cross clockwise from that third card at the bottom: left, top, right. The Angel of Wires, the Nine of Stones, the Prince of Stars. Dust touched the leftmost card with his free hand.
'Metatron is dead,' Samael said. But now, Dust noticed, he leaned forward, the front of his scarred shoulder pressed to Dust's left arm. He brushed the edge of the card, which showed a stylized, jewel-colored stained-glass- style image of an androgynous figure whose wings and arms were bound close with cutting-thin, multicolored strands. They were not barbed wire, but Dust persisted in thinking of them so.
Sometimes, even he found his program overly Gothic.
'And so the Angel of Wires resides in the Past,' Dust said. 'If the Angel of Wires is Metatron.'
'Who else?'
'You,' Dust said. 'Camael. Uriel, perhaps?'
'Not Asrafil?'
'Blades,' Dust said, in a clipped tone. 'Or nothing.' He touched the edge of the topmost card of the pattern. It was a woman, serene before an air lock twisted all over with grapevines and sunflowers. A branch of pomegranates hung heavy over her shoulder, and a white raptor sat hooded on her fist. 'The Nine of Stones, in the Sky. Under what influences the situation shall play out. It is the card of Apollonian mastery of the Dionysian. But not denial; the falcon is jessed and hooded, but he is not caged. He stands on her glove, ready in an instant to fly.'
Samael touched the Prince of Stars. A black-haired man, narrow-faced, with a tight goatee, stood with entwined burning suns over his shoulder. He leaned upon a harrow. Vines broke from the earth at his feet and twined him in fruit and flowers. 'And what is this?'
'Who.'
'Who is this?'
Dust smiled. 'Who do you think? Stars are the suit of fire, of course, of growth and nurturing. And also things that burn well-nigh eternally, that burn even iron in the end. He is the prince of the forge, that one. You know, on Earth, the cards had only four suits and each suit has only four face cards. But there are six important directions here in space.'
'Brother, you're stalling.'
'Brother,' Dust said. 'Choose another card.'
And when Samael had, and under Dust's guidance had laid it down to the right side of the cross and surround, they saw it was an image of a winged being, haloed and nude, who held a flaming orb between his opposed palms. The Angel of Stars. 'Ah,' Dust said. 'The querent.
'So the Angel of Wires
'It looks more likely. Choose a card.'
Above the Angel of Suns was laid the Princess of Blades. 'Perceval,' Samael said, with satisfaction.
Dust caught himself smirking again. How hard could it be, to let the smile just happen? 'The House. That which surrounds and influences the querent. Blades are the suit of atmosphere and habitation, the suit of change when the change is willed. Choose a—'
'—card.' Samael's hand was already moving. He slipped a card free and turned it over. With a glance at Dust to confirm the action, he laid it above the previous card. Another winged figure, but this one's wings faded without visible border from inky-feathered indigo into a blackness that covered the background of the card. In their depths, stars shimmered.
'The Angel of Voids,' Samael said, without looking at Dust.
'This is the card of what opposes the querent,' Dust said, and made himself expressionless.
Samael shifted in his chair. 'We could be partners, Dust.'
'We're not?'
Dust smiled, and Samael smiled back at him, shaking his head. 'Don't make me bring Asrafil into this.'
Dust tilted the plaques in his hand. 'Choose a card for the Outcome.'
'One more?'
'Maybe.'
Samael chose, and turned it over in the appropriate place, at the top of the straight line. 'The Princess of Voids,' Dust said. 'Voids are the suit of entropy, of memory, of shadows.'
'Nothing will come of nothing,' Samael said. 'Speak again.'
'You got that on my kiss,' Dust said. 'But I suppose now you think you always knew Shakespeare.'
'So Rien is the Outcome.'
'Part of it.' Dust shuffled the remaining plaques, cut them, and turned one over. The ten of blades. 'Ruin,' he said, 'but that doesn't concern us.' He turned another, covering the first. The three of blades. 'Heartbreak,' he said. 'But also not our problem. One more chance—'
He turned a third, and did not lay it down upon the others. Instead, he weighed it in his hand a moment, and then placed it adjoining the last card, tilted at an angle, as if it sprouted from the feet of the Princess of Voids.
Upon it was printed 'a stylized image of a bulbous, streamlined silver starship, nothing like the bulky and tangled outline of the
'The Tower,' Dust said. 'It represents change, over-throw, destruction of the old order. The crumbling of all you have worked for. Wrack, and riot. Downfall and over-f turn.'
'We fail?' Samael asked after a quiet moment.
'Flowers grow from corpses,' Dust said, and swept the cards together. 'Are you sure you would not like a glass of wine?'
'No,' Samael said. He pushed his chair away, the moment broken. 'I am not distracted, Jacob. You sent them to find Tristen Conn.'
Dust cased his cards, careful with the silk handkerchief that enfolded them inside the enamel box. 'He's not in the reading,' he said. 'Neither is Ariane. And yet their brother and nieces are. I wonder what that means.'
'You don't know?'
'I am,' Dust said primly, standing to bid his brother farewell, 'the Angel of Memory, Samael. Not the Angel of Foresight.'
The ugly lines of Samael's houndlike face rearranged themselves. He would never be handsome, but he was beautiful when he smiled. 'And yet, you believe in prophecy?'
'No,' Dust said, tucking his cards into a weskit-pocket. 'I believe in stacking the deck.'
14 evidence of war
Once it became evident they meant him no harm, the naked and filthy man Perceval had rescued attached himself to her. He didn't speak at first, and Perceval wondered if he was capable. He would not give up his broken
