writhing with shiny black beetles. 'Here,' he said, rapidly sifting them through a nanotronic net until the rot fell free and only the insects remained. When he had finished, he cupped a double handful of insects no bigger than pinheads at her, his expectant impression prompting her to hold out her hands.
When she had dropped to her knees and done so, steadying herself by watching his face intently, he poured the beetles across her palms.
They did not stay neatly contained in the cupped hollow, as they had for him. Instead, they scrambled up her arms, scattering, finding refuge in the dark recesses of her borrowed coat and the warm creases of her body. The prickle of their tiny barbed feet made her want to squirm and slap at them, but she set her jaw and waited it out. It was only a little while before they seemed to have chosen their places--in her hair, behind the cuffs of the coat, moving lightly across the outside of her arm in search of some eventual destination. Settled, they prickled no more than hairpins or jewelry.
Arianrhod shuddered, and tried not to scratch her scalp. 'What are those?'
'Symbiotes,' he said. 'They'll eat what you shed, and keep you from leaving a trail of DNA. If you are comfortable, come along; we should be gone before the swine return from foraging. They do not take kindly to interlopers.'
She followed on. A few steps brought them to a narrow passage, the sort that must be navigated in a half crouch. Their footsteps echoed--or at least, hers did. The Angel of Weapons walked silently.
Eventually, they emerged into another anchore, slightly larger than the last. Here, Arianrhod could see the game trail threading the earthen deck, the packed dry dirt that spoke of something--yes--hoofed, or running on sharp trotters. She stood up straight between the long veiling falls of glossy-leaved foliage that marked either side of the trail and said, 'Asrafil, tell me your plan.'
He glanced at her, but did not stop his steady, effortless progress. His coat swung against her ankles. She hurried to catch up. 'You have been loyal,' he said.
'I am loyal,' she insisted. 'And again, I asked you for something--'
'We will go there now,' he said, so smoothly she could not tell if she imagined his air of humoring her.
'But I can't help you if I don't know what you plan. Surely not just to beard the new angel in his lair?'
'I am too small for that,' Asrafil admitted, ducking his bald head as if it cost him. He looked so frail--bird- boned, delicate, his simulated collarbones projecting over the collar of his white T-shirt now that the long coat did not cover them.
For a moment, Arianrhod felt sympathy for him, protectiveness. She reached out and brushed his sleeve with her hand. 'I support you, Asrafil.'
He drew up short, shoulders lifted, eyes on the egress hatch a few more yards across the width of the anchore.
'It is terrible work I'm on,' he said, when she had given up hope of him speaking at all. He turned pale eyes on her and made a gesture as if to wet his mouth, though he had neither salivary glands nor the need for comfort. 'I go in search of an ally, Lady Arianrhod.'
She folded her arms. 'That was but half an answer.'
He nodded. And holding her gaze as if to hold, also, her understanding, he said, 'I seek the beast. To make of him a weapon, Arianrhod.'
'The beast?'
'Cynric's beast,' he said. 'Her darkest sorcery.'
Arianrhod stretched her shoulders. 'That's all well and good,' she said. 'But first you have to bring me to Ariane's strongholde.'
As Tristen led his band through the corridors and domaines near Rule, what they found at first was simple farmland--serried hydroponics tanks in racks twice Tristen's height, crushed strawberries and melons moldering unpicked on bruised and twisted stems, plastics cracked and nanopatched to hold water the world must have mopped from every corner and returned to containment. The plants were healing, slowly, but there was no hope for the fruit.
The party scavenged as they walked--cucumbers broken open but not yet rotten here, sprays of round green eggplant the size of eyeballs there--and ate on the move. Or rather, Tristen and Mallory scavenged, Gavin complained, and Samael looked on from his half-realized transparency, arch or amused.
Already the chamber of the bats seemed another lifetime, a story recounted but not experienced. He was growing scars over it, he knew, sealing up the raw place with proud tissue. Soon all that remained of a weeping wound would be a rough, unsightly patch, and the raised seam where the flesh had grown together.
Comfortable and relatively safe surroundings brought them half a day's travel from Rule. Things grew wilder there, but incrementally. At first, one could fail to notice that the hydroponics tanks had been full of sediment since before the nova. But before long they came to places where knobbed tree roots, blindly seeking moisture, had heaved open wall and floor panels, popped welds, rent sheet metal wide.
There was nothing in all the world so implacable as a tree. Out of the world, the only rival was the Enemy.
The braided web of passageways and chambers that comprised the agricultural domaine wore on Tristen, though he would not show his discomfort to the others. Quiet words, soft eye, straight spine. Push through, carry on. You can walk on a broken leg if you set your jaw against it. It's not good for you, or for the limb, but there's time to be fragile when the war is won. That, too, he had learned from his father.
Just as he had learned that the war is
The angel's oversight reassured him not at all. He only remembered the breaking of Israfel with his native memory, as he had not yet been Exalt when it happened, but he remembered it well enough. Tristen Conn did not trust angels.
When they passed into one of the null spots, he found comfort in their isolation, despite knowing he was leading them into the heart of whatever opposed Perceval and her loyal followers--among whom he must number himself.
Still, he breathed a sigh when they came not to another in the seemingly endless series of pressure doors, but instead a proper air lock, big enough to move large equipment. The massive doors had sealed against some ancient pressure drop. Tristen's band drew up before the first. While they paused, he looked from one companion to the next.
'Samael,' he said, having considered. The angel was not to be trusted--no angel was to be trusted, and the Angel of Poison least of all--but Tristen held the Captain's authority by proxy, and if anything could force a recalcitrant angel to duty, it was the word of Perceval Conn.
Without a glance, the angel passed forward, ghosting through the door, flakes of things swept from his field and pressed flat against it. Fifteen seconds--timed by Tristen's colony, during which he heard mostly the drip of condensation and Mallory breathing lightly, quickly, in anticipation--passed before Samael returned, dusting translucent hands one against the other and making the motes inside them sparkle and tumble.
'Heaven,' he said. 'Quite pretty. Within tolerances, I believe. I don't know why the lock tripped.'
Tristen sealed his helm up anyway. Mallory, unarmored, watched with amusement, but though Tristen thought of an apologetic glance, he didn't share it.
He palmed the air lock controls, entered his command security override, identified himself as First Mate--and found that the air lock would not open.
'Huh,' he said. 'Isn't this thing supposed to listen?'
Mallory chortled. 'Sure it is. But only if you know the right commands. The whole world does not yet know you're in charge of it. Let me try.'
Tristen stepped back, folding his arms so the armor clattered, and tried not to frown as Mallory laid hands on the panel, concentrated, and a moment later the lights began to cycle blue and green.
'There's no colony in the lock,' Mallory explained, straightening. 'It has no connection to Nova. No way to update.'
When it ground wide, protesting every centimeter, the atmosphere within stank of mold and must but was not toxic. Even through his suit filters, Tristen wrinkled his nose. He strode into the small space, ignoring the filth stirring around his ankles, and gestured the others in behind. When all the corporeal ones were clear of the outer
