survive,” she said, “by whatever means necessary. Cooperation, of course, is to be preferred, as is a nonviolent solution.”
Dorcas smiled. It was not a friendly smile, or even one of complicity. When she set her cup down on the table, it made so little sound against the woven vines that even Dust’s honed ears could scarcely detect it. “I find that reprehensible,” she said.
Dust had not expected his patron to be rocked back in her chair, but amid his bower of leaves he nevertheless—if asked—must have confessed himself gratified that she frowned. Fleetingly, so fleetingly a Mean might have missed it, though Dorcas most assuredly did not.
“You would find me a very bad enemy,” the patron said. “I think it would be wise to reconsider. There are elements among your people that are already in sympathy with me.”
“I said I found it reprehensible,” Dorcas said. “I did not say I would under no circumstances cooperate. I know who you are and I know who you were. I know what you stand reduced from, and I know what you did in Rule and among the Deckers who allied with you last. You are a Conn through and through, Ariane, and rotten with it. But it’s also possible that you are our only hope for survival.”
Dorcas stared calmly at the patron. The patron stared too, seeming taken aback for the first time in Dust’s experience.
There was a sound when the patron set her cup down, and a louder one of scuffed turf and tearing grass when she shoved her chair back from the table. Her hand fell on the freshly machined hilt of the blade she wore over her clothing, a common enough affectation among Engineers. “How dare you speak to me like that?”
Dorcas seemed unimpressed by the threat of unblade, or Conn. She did not rise, but a needler appeared in her hand, shivering slightly but accurately aimed. The patron gave no sign that she had noticed it. Her weapon remained in its sheath, ready on the instant to be drawn. And in the leaves of the branches behind her, Dust saw something heavy, shining, and silk-black coil and tongueflicker, ready on the instant to strike.
“Ariane,” she said. “Really. I was dead before you were out of diapers, and you expect fear? I have said I will help you. I will promise not to reveal what I know to the Captain or her dogs.” Her mouth bent in a moue of disgust. “But don’t expect me to lick your boots into the deal.”
Inside his bower, the frail remnant of Dust huddled close to a branch. He would leap if he must, join the fray in defense of his mistress. Worthy or not, despised or adored, she was his, and he was hers. Even Dorcas’s synbiotic monster-snake would not intimidate him into remaining in hiding if Ariane were to draw her blade.
And she might have, except Dorcas smiled, showing teeth. In that expression, Dust glimpsed the woman she had not been, the woman whose body she now inhabited. He remembered Sparrow Conn, and he could imagine it was her voice that said, “Though you grind my bones for bread, Commodore, you will not make me grovel.”
She did not stand. She sipped her coffee. She did not lower the barrel of her weapon. She raised her head to regard the patron and she smiled.
“You know,” she said, “combat reflexes live in the muscle memory more than they do in the mind. Do you know who wore this body before me, Ariane?”
The patron did not step back, though Dust saw the shiver through her calf muscles as she fought the reflex and won.
“Allies?” she said.
“After a fashion,” Dorcas agreed. “Please, drink your coffee. It would be a pity to waste.”
Tristen felt his armor shift to support his weight as he rocked back on his heels. “A survivor? Are you sure?”
“Living things are not my specialty,” Mallory admitted, “but it seems likely. That’s what a pulse and breathing generally mean, isn’t it?”
“When you’re right, Necromancer,” Tristen said, “you’re usually right.”
“Here, bring me more light.”
Mallory’s helm lights already illuminated the underside of the table with a dim glow. It radiated up through the water and the roots of the plants encapsulated in the transparent table, casting eerie, watery ripples of luminescence and shadow on the bulkheads and the ceiling. Tristen leaned down to bring his own units under the edge, where they could contribute a more indirect illumination. When he could see around Mallory—and his sensors could pick up what the necromancer’s body obscured—he grunted into his helm. Breath fogged his faceplate for a moment before the moisture controls cleared it, but what vanished behind the mist did not change when it emerged again.
Mallory cupped something the color and size of a lime in armored palms. It was warm; a tiny heartbeat shook it. Tiny breaths lifted its feathers and then let them fall smooth again. Its wings were no longer than Tristen’s middle finger. They stretched across Mallory’s hands, delicate primary feathers splayed as if they were fingers, too.
“Cynric’s pets look like that,” Tristen said. He backed up, allowing Mallory to scuff out from under the hydroponics table on armored knees that grated against the floor. Mallory stood, still cradling the minute casualty. “A stunning coincidence.”
“She didn’t do this,” Mallory said, turning to survey the dead.
“She wouldn’t have left behind evidence if she did,” Tristen agreed. Cynric did not make merely human errors. Her mistakes were more on the epic scale, her failings those of demigods. “So the question is, who did it, and how was it done, and what is the purpose in making it look like Cynric?”
Mallory’s head moved inside the armor—not argument, but distaste and bitterness.
Tristen said, “Nova, are you receiving this?”
“Your feed only,” the Angel said. “I’ll have to propagate into this space. A moment, please.”
Tristen felt nothing as the Angel reclaimed AE deck, colonies moving into the vacated areas. The Angel’s presence was as imperceptible to him as her absence had been to her own senses. He heard the chime in his head when she had accomplished it, though, and her soft voice saying, “There are no survivors in this area. The bulk of AE deck appears unaffected, but this cluster of anchores has been sterilized.”
“Except the bird.”
“Except the bird,” Nova confirmed.
“Cynric could conceal this area from Nova’s senses,” Mallory said, playing devil’s advocate. “If she wanted a private preserve in which to foment revolution and conquer the world.”
“Who knows why Cynric does anything?” Tristen said. He would set no manner of ruthlessness beyond her, but the carelessness still seemed out of character to him. “If she wanted to read the Bible, though, all she had to do was ask Perceval.”
He moved past Mallory, back into the corridor where they had entered. Storage lockers were keyed to other hand and voice prints, but Nova was in them now, and Tristen was her First Mate. They opened to his glance, not even so much as his command.
They contained the sorts of things you would expect from storage cubbies near an air lock. Emergency gear, rescue equipment, recyclables awaiting attention—and three rows of suits of armor standing arrayed in the deepest cabinet. The first rank of these were personalized—bright colors, varied sizes, the kinds of modifications and attachments that armor grew when partnered with one worker for a long period of time. But the suits behind those were disused, grayed-out, awaiting reawakening.
And two of them carried bright scars, as if from a deflected needle or a hard contact with some sharp stationary object. “These suits of armor,” Tristen said. “They have not repaired themselves.”
“Their colonies are not awake and autonomous,” Nova said. “And as I was locked out of this area, I could not oversee repairs.”
“Check them for DNA residue,” Tristen said. “In fact, check all the suits in here. There were three incursionists who got away. So either there’s a suit missing, along with the paper Bible and an unblade—or the third person took absolutely no damage at all.”
“In any case,” Nova said, “if there’s DNA in these suits of armor that does not belong to any of the dead, it may lead us to identify survivors.”
“Indeed,” Tristen said. “It’s possible
“That’s worthy of your father,” Mallory said over the comm.
Tristen frowned, both stung and grateful that Mallory could not see his response. “That I can recognize the
