his warmth at seeing Mallory’s slender silhouette would not be hidden.
It came out in his posture, he thought, the way his chin and shoulders lifted. Mallory brought energy into any room.
Mallory spoke softly. “So where do we go now?”
“They will expect us to invade the Decks in force. They have
“The attack does seem machined to provoke just that response.” Mallory frowned, so Tristen allowed that smile out after all, and offered it in return. “The Bible. Why would they think we’d care for that?”
“I asked myself that question also,” Tristen said. “It is very old; it is historic. But we know the Builders’ creed. We have lived it.”
“We have ejected it.” Mallory made a dismissive gesture right-handed, fingers flipping back and forth like a swinging door. “And what if we refuse the manipulation into war? What if we go alone? Under a flag of truce, to parley?”
“We? You and I? As knights-errant, Necromancer?”
“A knight-errant and a magicker,” Mallory corrected. “It’s a traditional pairing, is it not? Of course, if you’d rather, you could take Cynric—”
“Two of us would be easy to kill, and then Perceval would be without Chief Engineer, First Mate,
“And is Mallory so precious as to be named by name?” Mallory dropped hands to thighs and turned around. Fingertips half concealed in the pouf of flame-colored sleeves rubbed against snug black trousers, a gesture that might be nervousness or irritation—or even amusement, given the evidence of arched eyebrows.
“Mallory is certainly unique enough to be named by name,” he said. “Like Head, or Surgeon, or Gardener. Where there is only one of a thing, its function
Mallory’s expression melted into a smile. “If Tristen Tiger scents a conspiracy meant to entice him to war, who am I to gainsay? War is your art, Conn.”
“You provoke me, Necromancer.”
Tristen dipped his head and brushed his mouth against the necromancer’s cool lips. Mallory kissed back, lightly, affectionate, until Tristen pulled away. If it was not the great passion of Tristen’s youth, well. Great passion led so easily to great tragedy.
He said, “Pack your things, then, if you’ll risk it. Though I lead you unto death.”
The necromancer smiled. “Death is my middle name.”
These days, the AE decks were accessible by a simple lift. A lift which functioned properly, which zipped them dramatically around the inside curve of the world from Rule (complete with panoramic and perhaps unsettling views), and which delivered Tristen and Mallory neatly to the Deckers’ port of entry. As it was settling into the docking cradle, the door lights blinking yellow-to-blue one by one, Mallory whispered, “Don’t you ever miss the adventure of the old days?”
“Almost as much as I miss the romance and glamour of epidemic fratricide,” Tristen said out of the corner of his mouth as the lift doors opened. He just caught a glimpse of Mallory’s answering smirk as the mirrored interior surface slipped aside.
It wasn’t love, thank all things holy. But they understood one another, and sometimes that was enough. More than enough.
They came out of the lift with their helms open, a display of blatant confidence, into a surprisingly barren stretch of corridor. Little of the world was not blanketed in biosphere. Throughout her holdes and corridors, her domains and anchores, spiders spun and air mosses hung from every stanchion; lichens crept along the corners where footsteps rarely fell, to be groomed up again by hungry ship cats; apparent shadows dissolved at a motion into flocks of black-blue butterflies. But here, the deck gleamed dully through scratchy polish; the bulkheads were stark, the trim painted white and the fittings glistening.
“Sterile,” Tristen murmured, just loud enough for his armor’s collar mike to pick up the word and transmit it to Mallory.
“Dead,” Mallory answered, running both hands through tight dark curls. The gesture displayed that they were not immediately armed without offering any hint of appeasement or lessened status, and Tristen admired it.
Voice raising, the necromancer called, “Hello? I am Mallory, and this is Tristen Conn. We come on the Captain’s business, as you were informed! Is there someone here to greet us?”
Mallory’s phrasing granted them a right to be there. Someone less experienced might have asked permission, presented themselves as envoys, or begged truce.
But for this, that would not do. Tristen and Jordan had not conquered these people in blood and fire for Tristen to walk among them in supplication, no matter how fraught the situation had become.
Besides, it was just as possible that, other than one or two mercenaries or radicals, the Deckers had had nothing to do with the attack on the Bridge. It was easily possible that the Deckers and the Conn family and its allies were being maneuvered into fighting one another—a conflict that could only bring blood and destruction on them all, and leave the victor weakened even if it didn’t create a patent power vacuum for some mutual enemy to exploit.
Yet show of strength that it was, it received no answer.
“Nova?” Tristen said.
“The holde beyond the next gate shows every sign of being normal, fully functioning, and inhabited,” the Angel answered. “Shall I announce you, First Mate?”
“No, thank you.” That would be just what would endear them to the Deckers—an Angel appearing wreathed in flame and glory midair, bringing word that the Conns had dropped by to ask a few questions and borrow a cup of sweets. “We’ll let ourselves in the back door. Although if you could override the locking mechanism, Nova—”
“I would,” the Angel answered, “but somebody else has already overwritten it. The door’s been hacked. I am afraid you will have to open it manually.”
“You mean by force.”
“I do.”
Tristen slipped Mirth from its sheath. It wasn’t an unblade. It could not slice the door from its moorings, scramble the colonies and programs within on a single pass, and cut the metal from the bulkhead as cleanly as a quantum wand. But in this instance, it would suffice—and Tristen thought he might prefer the repairable outcome to the permanent carnage left by an unblade.
But he did hope that nobody on the other side of the door was waiting for him with Charity naked and deadly to hand. Mirth wouldn’t stand up to fencing an unblade for long—if it stood at all. “Prepare to repair the door behind us, please.”
“Of course,” Nova said, and Tristen raised his daughter’s sword.
When he brought it down, it rent metal, filling the corridor with the hiss of escaping air as pressure equalized through the tight gap. Tristen’s ears popped, and based on Mallory’s grimace, his were not the only ones.
“Sorry,” he said, and swung Mirth up again. Two more strokes made a gap wide enough for them to step through, and Tristen had no fear that Nova would seal up the damage behind them. He was still sparing in using his sword as a door-opening technique, but at least it was possible now. Fifty years before, he would have run the risk of spacing entire holdes. Nova was much more in control of herself than she had been.
—except perhaps not. Because when Tristen slipped through the gap, he was met by the evidence of carnage.
No one had tidied the bodies. They lay where they had fallen, or where they had dragged themselves— several close enough to the entrance that Tristen had just cut through that he had to step over outflung arms and legs to clear the passage for Mallory. “Seal up,” he said, his armor responding instantly. As the helm telescoped up to lock him within, he heard the answering whirr of Mallory’s device.
He also heard the click of Mallory’s footsteps descending the path within the door. There was no point in turning; the necromancer was quite capable of self-defense, and would be dogging Tristen’s heels anyway.
Inside, the holde was just as he remembered, other than being full of dead people. The Deckers preferred— had preferred?—a more regimented approach to ecobalance than most of the world, and their holde was divided
