Grail

into close, tidy rooms lined with hydroponics tanks and workstations. Hanging baskets under full-spectrum lights dripped strawberries and cherry tomatoes. Tristen suspected that, as one spiraled closer to the exterior of the holde, there would be panels allowing natural light in, as much of this would have been built or renovated while the world lay becalmed in the orbit of the shipwreck stars.

But now, this pleasant, gardened, orderly workspace stank of vomit and evacuated bowels. Stringy-haired corpses slumped in corners or draped over chairs. “Your readouts, Nova?”

“I am listening,” the Angel said at his side. “And through your colony I see what you see. But I cannot perceive it directly. Within these walls, my awareness has been edited.”

“Just like old times,” Tristen said bitterly. “Are you having any trouble healing the door?”

“Given current circumstances,” Mallory suggested, “I think I shall turn around and check.”

The necromancer vanished between leaves, only to return, nodding, a moment later. “The door is cured.”

“Unlike this place.” Tristen crouched to check another set of life-signs, knowing the gesture was futile.

“Someone cleaned up after himself,” Mallory said. “They were Exalt, these Deckers. But they were new to it and untrained, and they were not Conns. Whatever was unleashed on them, you or I might have known how to defend against, but here it was like nerve gas in a kindergarten.”

“Indeed,” Tristen answered. “Why does this remind me of something?”

“Shhh.” Mallory raised a hand.

Tristen had opened his mouth to ask the question before he realized that, no matter what he said, it would be stupid. He held his tongue and watched as Mallory crossed the holde to crouch, then crawl, peering under the edge of a hydroponics tank full of lush, burgundy-veined beet greens and tiny purple beets no bigger than marbles.

“Prince Tristen,” the necromancer said, “I suspect I have found a survivor.”

   Dust should have known it was all going wrong as soon as his patron shrugged her appropriated body into a more comfortable arrangement—which included locking up the Conn personality who usually animated the borrowed form—and allowed Dust to lead her through the world. He was surprised that she would come to Dorcas as a penitent, but he supposed, as it was his patron who had desired this meeting, it was incumbent upon her to travel. And Dorcas had shown no desire to step forth from her Heaven and explore the possibilities presented her. She might hear supplicants from her own domaine and holdfast, like any Queen, but that was different than going to see someone.

Dust’s patron had always been the sort to enforce her rights and insist upon her privileges. She took status seriously and used it as a tool to get her will. Dust knew it rankled in her like a shard under the skin that she had fallen so far as to be going before Dorcas—an Engineer and a Go-Back—to beg assistance. But he’d also seen how ruthless she was, which left him wondering if there were any way this proposed alliance could end without another heap of bodies.

His patron had never been quite sane.

But he was her angel, now, and she was his Conn, and he would do as she bid. It was in the nature of angels to serve.

He accompanied her into a lift—her body’s trusted status in Engine let them travel freely—and from thence into one of the great arterial trunks that served commuters around the world. The paths from Engine to Rule were long, but they had been among the first ones Caitlin Conn and Captain Perceval had ordered repaired once the resources were available.

Though Dust and his patron were not going all the way to Rule, the same arterials would make the trip to the Heaven of the Edenites much more practical given their limited window for travel and negotiations.

They traveled in silence. His patron did not invite him to ride on her shoulder, as another might, so he sat by her ankles and tucked his tail around his toes to present an appearance of tidiness. When they arrived, Dust could tell that his patron was insulted that no entourage awaited them—only Dorcas in her clean robes, embroidered about the collar, with her hat hung down her back under the thick yellow coils of her hair.

“Hello,” Dorcas said. “Your pardon if I seem surprised; your messenger did not explain you had been rebodied in the form of a Conn.”

Dorcas’s confession of surprise did nothing to smooth the patron’s prickles.

“Who did you think you would be meeting?” the patron asked, sweet reason and imperiousness mixing in a tone that Dust knew was every reason for caution. Surely he had not been so timid when he was a larger angel?

But now he was a toolkit only, a small and cowardly beast, and not the black-mirrored dragon of yore. You changed; you adapted; you made the most of what you were and strove to become more. He would survive. Though we are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth—

“I try to assume nothing,” Dorcas said. “Come, be welcome. Let me make you comfortable and bring you refreshment.”

She turned and moved on, gesturing the patron to follow. She took the lead, since she obviously knew where they were going. The toolkit scampered at her heels, too small to manage even a semidignified trot.

This was not the sort of society where anyone waited on anyone else, and Dust could sense his patron’s disapproval of this, too. She hid it well, though. The momentary stiffness of spine melted into calm dignity, and the smile on her lips even seemed to touch her eyes. She carried herself like the princess she had been, and part of the training of a princess was graciousness. She even managed to seem pleased when Dorcas showed her the white- painted vine-woven table and chairs set under the shade of a glossy-leafed coffee tree heavy with bright red berries. Dust could only read the exasperation rising in his patron by that head-tilt and the little smile—the one that said to anyone who knew her well: I am going to eat your liver.

As if reading the situation, Dorcas pulled out the patron’s chair and the patron sat. A moment later, Dorcas seated herself. Dust hopped up the bole of the coffee tree and vanished among the branches, careful not to knock twigs or leaves on the humans’ heads as he found a position from which he could observe in comfort and concealment. As the foliage closed around him, he felt the hammering of his tiny animal heart cease. This was safety, cover—protection—and his instincts rewarded him for seeking it.

The patron waited patiently while Dorcas poured coffee and passed around almond milk and agave syrup. Then she lifted her salvaged-materials cup, touched it to her lips, inhaled the steam—eyes closed briefly as her colony analyzed the composition—and set it down again.

“It’s safe,” Dorcas said, and tasted her own coffee to demonstrate. When her eyes closed, Dust thought it was in appreciation. The almond milk made little swirls and shimmers of fat on the surface, and small curdled patches, but to his body’s organic nostrils it certainly smelled good.

When she set the coffee down, she smiled. “You wanted to speak to me.”

“I want to take the ship,” the patron said, with the boldness that had always been hers. “I do not know yet if this is feasible, but I do know that the current Captain’s policies will lead us to death and disaster. Those who hold Grail will not share or surrender it without a fight, and we—” She sighed. “We have come too far to be turned away. We will not survive another long passage in the dark.”

Dust watched Dorcas swirl her coffee in the cup, the curling edge of the wavelet she made leaving a ring of froth and wetness behind. “You are forthright,” she said. “I like that.”

The patron smiled and sipped her drink. From her expression, it pleased her better than everything else about the day. “We are talking about the people who contaminated your preserve with symbionts against your will. Who engineered the colonies to begin with, and tortured and murdered innocent life-forms to do so. Cynric Conn and her minions respect no boundary; they adhere to no ethical compass beyond what I want, I shall have.”

“A stiff dick has no conscience,” Dorcas said.

The patron grinned. Humans, Dust thought, were so … erratic.

“Exactly,” the patron said. “And a Conn dick is doubly blind to consequence.”

Dorcas smoothed one hand across her hair. Her lips thinned. She drew in a deep breath and said, “And what are the consequences of your conquest of the world? We’ll descend on Grail and take what we want of her? We’ll abandon negotiation in favor of force?”

Dust saw the flicker of frustration cross the patron’s face, heard the skip of her elevated heart rate. “We’ll