she would pay Tristen back for this.
He let her eat in peace, and she was grateful. Gratitude toward Tristen was one of her more basic emotions. She knew they would have to talk more soon, but for now he had bought her this moment of peace, and he was waiting for her to reopen the pressing subjects at hand. The gratitude toward Tristen was multiplied by her gratitude toward Head, who had outdone hirself. Perceval almost imagined she could taste the nurturing in each delicately flavored bite.
Since she actually felt like eating for a change, she waited until her belly was full. She then waited a few moments more, savoring the peace and the view and the company, until even Tristen—who could eat like an adolescent boy—was slowing.
“If we find Charity,” Perceval said, “and we find the paper Bible, we find the culprits.”
Tristen rubbed his chin. The faint bristle of his beard hairs caught the light, silvery-bright, as if the cold glazed his face. “Yes. Whoever has it, though, can hide it. As well as they hid themselves when they came to take it.”
“Themselves? You don’t think they were all Deckers? Mercenaries? Deckers have a martial culture. Now that they’re Exalt, I would expect good fighters among them.”
“You killed two,” Tristen said. “If Caitlin inflicted any casualties, they took their dead and wounded with them. Now, I knew my sister well—”
He smiled mirthlessly, and she echoed him, feeling the reflex stretch her face across bared teeth. “You’re right. What I fought would not have killed her. Not as she died, with one clean thrust. Not armed with an unblade that could cut any weapon it came against. The ones I fought were using dart throwers and extruded monoblades.”
Perceval fished out the half-eaten noodle packet she’d stowed back in the basket, for something to do with her hands. She should have seen it. Too much grief—
Nova interrupted, only hesitantly. “Captain?”
Nova was kind, and permitted Perceval to swallow her moment of sorrow before continuing.
“Oh, dear.” She stuck her chopsticks through the safety loop and allowed the packet to snap closed.
Tristen sighed and set his food back inside the picnic basket.
Nova said, “It’s not a crisis, but I did want to alert you that we’ve received a return transmission from the leader of the people of Grail.” The Angel paused. “It’s … friendly, as far as it goes.”
“But it doesn’t go far—? No, never mind, Nova. Play it, please,” Tristen said. “What does the Fisher King have to say for himself?” Tristen glanced at Perceval for her permission, but it was strictly a formality. She hadn’t yet had a need to gainsay him. All evidence suggested that he had no ambition beyond being the perfect first lieutenant, confidant, and friend—and, if that was his ambition, he fulfilled it.
“Play it,” she confirmed.
Nova resolved an image against the blank wall of the tent opposite. The man who appeared was the color of burnt sienna, one of the brown rainbow tints of corroded metal, his skin darker than any Perceval had ever seen with her own eyes. Perceval at first tried not to stare out of politeness, until she was reminded by Tristen’s fixed gaze that the object of their attention could not witness her rudeness.
His skin was healthy, glossy, almost gleaming. The whites of his eyes were ivory, with a warm undercast from a Mean’s red blood. The irises were a brown so dark it was difficult to see the details and variances of pigmentation.
Besides the color of his skin, he had a broad face, well-fleshed, with a low-bridged nose and high forehead. His black-brown hair, receding like any older male Mean’s, was kept short, and from the texture it looked like it curled in tight spirals that gave it a plush appearance. And he was big, big and broad, with thick fingers and wrists, and heavy bones and muscles that spoke of a life lived under oppressive gravity.
“Is that from
“Hello,” he said, his words halting and strangely accented but understandable. “I am Administrator Danilaw Bakare, City Administrator of Bad Landing on the independent and Earth-allied world of Fortune. It is my surprised delight to greet you, and to assure you that you are welcome in our system.”
He took a breath and glanced down. Scanning notes, Perceval realized with a painful shortness of breath that wasn’t just due to the lack of oxygen. That, more than anything, brought home to her what she had known intellectually: this alien man was a Mean.
She was still shocked at her own egocentrism that she found herself surprised to be treating with a Mean. Cynric had not developed the symbiont until long after the world left Earth behind, and she had cannibalized an alien life-form to do it. So why had Perceval expected that Earth would have produced the same technology?
She stilled herself, and paid attention to what followed. It was elaborate in the extreme, leading her to wonder if the diplomatic protocols of these alien beings were more focused on ritual and poetry than those to which she was accustomed.
“When humans first took to the sea,” Danilaw said, “they crept around the edges of the land masses. They clung to the shallows and sailed within sight of the coasts. But a few adventurers were more daring. In longboats, on rafts, in outrigger canoes, and in lashed reed boats they braved the deep ocean, navigating through storm and peril to find new lands. Many—perhaps most—did not survive the journey.
“When humans first entered space, it was the same way. We dabbled in the gentle currents around our homeworld. We sowed bottle messages upon the deep, sending out drone explorers, and never dared hope that anyone would find them and follow their messages to where we languished, cast away. Some few brave or foolhardy adventurers followed, in vessels hopelessly inadequate for the perils they would face.
“We had numbered you among them. We counted you as heroes lost to the emptiness of space. Today is a day of rejoicing, for we have been proved wrong.”
He paused, letting her see him take a deep breath, and checked his notes again.
“There will be some quarantine protocols to get out of the way, and I’m sure we each have a great deal of news and history to exchange that will interest the other. We will send trade and cultural negotiators. But in the meantime, we would request permission to send a small vessel to dock with your ship. In addition, in the metadata of this transmission, you will find a document containing a list of questions regarding the census of your vessel. Any information you can provide as to the demographics and ideologies of your population would help us greatly in preparing to arrange your reception.”
He smiled—a big, human grin that Perceval found reassuring despite the alien architecture of his features. “We’re looking forward to meeting you.”
9
tristen, tiger
The children born of thee are sword and fire,
Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws.
After the waystars exploded, before the Captain and her officers won back the world, there had been war. War was something Tristen Conn excelled at.
For his Captain, he had fought. Those memories were as clear and bright as they had ever been, burned into his mind with machine perfection, though the emotion and connection blurred with the years. It was like any recording, Tristen thought. You came back to it years later and saw yourself, and wondered who in all the world that person had ever been—so young, so stern, so smooth of skin and soul.
The first of it had been on AE deck, ship-west, in the 9s and 7s. Not Heavens or even holdes, but a cluster of domaines and anchores linked by rodent-maze tubes and air locks. Tristen had entered them at the head of what passed for his army: a band of soldiers neither ragtag nor undisciplined, but drawn from the ranks of Engineers and anyone else Tristen could find whose proclamations of loyalty to the Captain would withstand examination under validation. Not that there weren’t all sorts of ways to fool a validator—even a well-trained and experienced one—
