Chill

the answers? Oh, very well. I hope it's still Job? I could just run through the whole thing, you know--oh. One attempt? Well, I guess I'd better get it right the first time, then.'

Benedick was somewhat accustomed to the manners and means of sorcerers. He did not even have to pretend unsurprise as the necromancer laid both hands palm to palm as if praying, rested lips on fingertips, and stood for several minutes merely addressing the door. For some time, nothing happened except Gavin rustling boredly and the movement of Mallory's lips--not quite enough to count as mouthing the words, but certainly the tic of somebody recalling memorized phrases.

Tristen's armor creaked when he folded his arms.

Just as Benedick was about to interrupt, Mallory flashed a grin. 'Hah. I knew it was back there somewhere.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'I'm a necromancer,' Mallory said, tapping skull with forefinger. 'What did you think that meant? I get information from dead people. Gavin, you can just whisper it in my ear.'

The basilisk rustled, crest flat, head skulking low between hunched shoulders. 'Don't you da--'

'You will tell me what you remember.'

'And if I don't remember?'

'You mean if you don't want to remember?' Mallory shrugged. 'Then we all die. Gavin--'

'Every time I look at her,' the basilisk said, 'I come back a little less myself.'

Benedick scrubbed the corners of his eyes. 'Space this. Can't we just cut it open?'

Mallory's head shook back and forth. 'For me, critter.'

And Gavin sighed and tucked his head under his wing, but from the look of comprehension on Mallory's face, he gave the necromancer what they needed.

Mallory placed a palm flat against the panel beside the door and recited, 'In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.'

There was a creak, a hesitation, a groan of tired metal and fatigued machinery. A fine whitish dust, more like lime scale than rust, showered from the top of the frame.

The door glided open and Chelsea, straight-spined, brushed past Mallory with murmured thanks and stepped through. Benedick stood aside so Tristen could follow, but Tristen gestured him on. 'I have armor.'

'Right.'

Benedick passed through the entry, Mallory--with attendant basilisk--only joining the procession when he and Chelsea were well inside. Beyond, he found himself in an armory like any other, the suits lined up at rest from wall to wall. They were all alike, uncustomized, suitable for anyone to take and make his own.

'Nova,' Benedick said, 'how is it that these suits were not measured among our resources?'

'I didn't know they were here,' the angel said. 'I'm afraid this is all very much outside my program, Prince Benedick.'

'Right.'

'Cynric,' Gavin said, the name stressing his voice strangely. From the corridor outside, Benedick heard Samael's hoarse chuckle. 'And from the number of suits here, she may have expected more than a few of us.'

'Well, it's nice to know she can be wrong about something.'

Chelsea touched the closest suit of armor, laying her palm against the access plate. Benedick was reassured when the armor reacted just as it should, first absorbing the plate, then peeling open to allow her admittance.

Benedick snaked one long arm over her shoulder and touched a suit in the second row. It came forward, picking its way around both Chelsea and the first rank of suits, and paused before Benedick. He tapped the shoulder, and it unfolded like a flower. As he stepped inside, he saw Mallory choosing a suit, too. Gavin fluttered up, onto the suit's head, and Mallory stepped inside.

After a moment of concern, which Benedick endured with the best stoicism he could muster, the armor sealed around him, stretching and snuggling until it settled against his body like a second skin. The cool colloidal layer of the interior adjusted, molding close while he grimaced at the familiar, unpleasant sensation. Then it was done, the armor chiming to indicate a successful fit.

He scrolled his helm open. Mallory came up on his right side, Chelsea on the left. There was no hesitation as they returned to Tristen, who had sealed his own armor. Tristen took the fore. Benedick, Chelsea, and Mallory fell in behind him. There could be one leader of an expedition such as this, and Tristen was oldest and highest-ranked in the family and the crew. Etiquette and tradition brooked no argument.

'Samael,' Tristen said. 'We are ready.'

But Samael paused for a moment, immaterial arms folded, head tipped insolently, and grinned at them.

'Yes?' Tristen said.

With every evidence of satisfaction, Samael shook his head. 'If I saw us coming, I'd beshit myself.'

Tristen's helm was up, but Benedick did not need to see his face to hear the satisfaction in his voice. He touched the hilt of the sword at his hip; Benedick recognized Mirth, and also its provenance.

'Good,' Tristen said, and gestured the angel on ahead with a white-gauntleted hand. 'Then let us essay the Broken Holdes.'

Arianrhod would have liked to have moved proudly from the embrace of her angel to the belly of Leviathan, but her strength was spent. She found herself delivered like a baby, like a package, something handed off as an inconvenience. She could not even stir herself to protest, though her numb hand itched for the hilt of her unblade.

--Here is your safe place--said Asrafil, his coat furling about him like wings.-- Here is your bower.--

Arianrhod fell through space, drifting into the cage that surrounded the pitted dullness of the living asteroid. Its mass drew her in, gently, lightly, assisted by a little thrust and guidance from Asrafil's colony. If she had the strength she would have reached out to him, spread wide her arms in supplication and pleaded like a child, but her Exalt body was freezing from the edges, already stiff with the Enemy's chill, and soon even her mental processes would fail her.

Panic stabbed her, sharp as a fistful of shards.--Do not make of me your sacrifice! --she begged.--Have I not served you faithfully, O Asrafil?--

Asrafil only receded. He still moved with comfort, his pale hands shining with reflected light as he gestured before his coat. Before, also, the face of the Enemy, wreathed though it was in the dust of dead stars.

--This service you may do me also--he said, allowing her to imagine that she felt the brush of a hand against her cheek, stroking back the strands of her hair. It was a projection, a manipulation. Nothing real. --Don't leave me!--

He was too far away now for her to have seen it, and anyway her eyes had frozen, but she knew the look of his smile. Even imagining it pierced her heart.--Silly human. I cannot leave you. Don't you know I am with you always?--

A maw--a fissure--opened across the surface of the asteroid beneath her. Light shifted within, aurora veils fingering forth in chilly, gelid blue reminiscent of a colony's genetic marker.

And Arianrhod fell into the welcoming embrace of Leviathan.

The mammoth bid them adieu at the air lock, which Gavin found disappointing. He'd rather been anticipating the spectacle of a quarter-ton quadruped in armor.

Gavin was not only sad to see it go due to the potential for entertainment. Whether he and it had grown from splinters of the same personality like so many soldiers grown from dragon teeth was an open question. But if they had, they were something like siblings.

Gavin had never had a sibling before. He was curious to discover what it was like.

He hoped he'd get the chance.

The Broken Holdes were exactly as Gavin had expected: barren, twisted, full of warped metal and fluctuating gravity. The Holdes were disintegrating, as the name would indicate, but you could never tell until you passed into a space if it was holed and evacuated, or if the atmosphere held--and, if it held, what its density might be. And that density wasn't necessarily consistent from one section of a space to the others. The random gusts of gravity and vectors of the world's rotation and acceleration affected that, as did the simple matter of how the ventilation in any given unit was working.

As they moved deeper into the wasteland, Gavin released his grip on Mallory's armor and flew up to join