Grail

possibility does not mean that I advocate the act.”

The necromancer made a rough sound of constrained laughter. “Indeed. Tristen, come see this?”

Tristen left the storage cubby open and returned to the charnel house of the hydroponics lab. As he walked, he heard Jordan’s voice in his helm, relayed by Nova.

“Hello, Tristen.” Strange to have his former apprentice treating with him as an equal now. Strange, and satisfying. After his return greeting, she continued, “It looks as if the colony-entity that invaded this space disguised itself as pieces of Nova, broadcasting the usual surface signals—and totally bogus data. Nova didn’t know a parasite was masquerading as a portion of her own body. When it retracted, it simply withdrew its presence and wiped its program from the infected units and left them vacant. There is not even a line of physical retreat to follow.”

“That also explains how it kept her out of the Bridge access,” Tristen said. “That suggests a crafty and experienced angel or djinn.”

“It suggests somebody in particular to me,” Nova said, “but I ate him. Also, if there was DNA residue in the suits, it’s been consumed. Somebody’s colony was careful.”

“Well, crap.” Tristen opened the hatch and stepped back into the Decker farm. Mallory, helm open and gauntlets retracted, crouched beside the body of a young woman who had fallen back in the chair she’d died in, a yellow line of bile dried down her jaw and staining the front of her blouse. The parrotlet, still breathing softly, lay amongst wadded fabric on the desktop.

Tristen cleared his throat. “Is it safe to have your helm open? You might contract the agent of death. You might transport it outside this sealed environment.”

“Can’t kiss a corpse with sealed lips,” Mallory said. “Nova says it was a poisoned program, wiped along with the presence that spawned it. We’re as safe here as we are anywhere.”

Assuming the Angel’s not being fooled by the enemy’s camouflage again. Tristen bit his lip. “It seems like there are a lot of familiar modi operandi at work here. And all of the individuals those tactics suggest are supposed to be dead.”

“Well, death,” Mallory said. “I wouldn’t use that to rule out suspects. Death is my specialty, and you have my professional assurances that it’s not in any way permanent. I’ve got a head so full of dead people I suspect whoever I started off as should probably be counted as one of them.

“Transformation, on the other hand, now, that’s the one you have to watch out for. How much of you has to die before you stop being you and become somebody else?”

Tristen thought of Cynric, of Gavin, of Nova and Rien. He thought of Sparrow and Dorcas, and himself and a dark hole full of wings and insects and the heat of decomposition. He came a step closer, itching to reach out to Mallory, forcing himself to observe. But he did not open his helm.

The necromancer framed the dead woman’s eyes with soft fingertips, and leaned so close that Tristen felt as if he had interrupted a seduction.

As he watched, the kiss was completed. Mallory pressed pink lips over the dead woman’s mouth, and Tristen could see the worming motions of the necromancer’s tongue working between the corpse’s teeth. Mallory’s eyes closed, fingers fanning through brown hair to hold the head steady.

There was not much rigor yet, or it was passing. By the lack of cadaverine and sulfur compounds in the air, Tristen presumed the former—but with luck (and skill) Mallory would have a better answer momentarily. When the necromancer straightened, dark eyes thoughtful, Tristen knew some ghost of an answer at least had been retrieved.

“The brain is dead but fresh,” Mallory said. “A virus is interfering with the symbionts, preventing regeneration; Nova and Jordan will likely be able to remove the inhibition and at least get the bodies back. And perhaps learn more about how Nova was kept out of this anchore—”

“And kept from being aware that she was being kept out of this anchore,” Nova added dryly.

Mallory snorted. “Any program—be it based in wetware or hardware—can be hacked.”

“And did you hack her memories?” Tristen asked, stroking the dead woman’s hair back with his armored hand.

“The machine memories were wiped,” Mallory said. “I think these people were used as a stalking horse by a greater enemy. I think that enemy was thorough in covering his or her tracks.”

The smile that curved lovely lips was smug enough to make Tristen shiver with memory. This is hardly the time.

But what were a few dozen more dead in his lifetime?

“I notice,” Tristen said—aware that, in terms of cool professionalism, he was overcompensating, “that you specifically mention the machine memories.”

“The meat is empty,” Mallory said. “No electrical impulses left at all. She’s dead.” The necromancer’s palms rasped softly, nervously, against one another. “The local monitoring records have been purged, but there are still neurochemical traces.”

Tristen felt his eyebrows rise.

“Oxytocin, serotonin. Whoever killed her was someone she trusted to do her no harm.”

“A friend?”

“A friend.”

*   *   *   

By the time they’d returned to Rule, Tristen had made his decision. He left Mallory to report to Perceval—the broad details had been handled through Nova and the com, but the Captain would have questions, and both Mallory and Tristen had thought it best if their suspicion that revenant shards of Dust and Ariane might be involved was broken to Perceval in person—and brought the unconscious parrotlet to its creator for a detailed conversation.

Cynric might have been hard at work. She might have been napping on her feet. It was possible, Tristen admitted, pausing just inside the threshold of the door that had slipped open for him as automatically as if he were invited, that she had learned a way to manage both at once, sleeping with one side of her brain at a time like a cetacean. He did not think he’d ever seen her lie down to rest, or even claim a need for it.

But then, she was Cynric the Sorceress—or she was all that was left of what had been Cynric the Sorceress —and she was as much Engine as Engineer.

“Hello, Tristen,” she said without turning. Her head was tilted back on her long neck, the long almond-shaped eyes closed so her lashes smudged her cheeks, her hair—straight as Perceval’s, and browner—trailing across her loose robes to fall the length of her spine. “You have brought something of mine?”

“I think it’s ill or injured.” He came up beside her, extending the transparent clamshell in which he’d nested the parrotlet. It lay amid fleece like an icing decoration on meringue, green on white with its tiny head tucked close to the body, its papery eyelids closed over eyes round as beads.

“Hacked,” she said, accepting the package. It opened at her touch, and she gently insinuated her fingers under the bird’s still form. “How odd. This isn’t the first time anyone has brought me one of these.”

She lifted the tiny thing and put its head in her mouth, then removed it—damp—and frowned. “It’s been cut off from the rest, poor thing. Somebody who should be performing his own research is attempting to ride my labcoattails, Prince Tristen.”

The shake of her head made her eyes catch the light, and the stud through her nose glowed dimly—the same pale green as the parrotlet. Tristen watched as it shuddered, raised its head slowly, and shook itself as if awakening from a hard dream that had left it logy.

“Hmm,” she said, studying it, then shifted her attention to Tristen. “Thank you. I suppose it will be all right now. Where did you find this?”

“Among a few dozen murdered Deckers.” He handed her a crystal, the same recordings of what he and Mallory had seen that Mallory was delivering to the Captain. She accepted and pocketed it; he had no doubt she would download and integrate the information as soon as he departed. “What could you do with one of those birds? If you were unfriendly to the world, or to its Captain?”

Cynric opened the cage of her fingers and let the bird fly up, circling the irregular outline of her workshop. “They’re a prayer.”

Tristen folded his arms. “I realize,” he said, as jovially as he could manage, “that you have put a great deal of effort and practice into your gnomic utterances, Sister. But I for one would appreciate it if you spoke plainly, just this once.”

She straightened in surprise—not quite a recoil, but a definite reaction—and crunched the clamshell and