Bened.i.c.k had not antic.i.p.ated how badly it would affect him to see his home in ruins. When he and Chelsea left the transfer station, minimally equipped by the carnivorous orchids-clothing and a little food, at least, and ill-fitting boots that must have been salvaged from some storage locker undisturbed since the Moving Times, as they were primitive and immutable-he understood intellectually what he might find.
But to see a raveled hollow, the edges still decaying, scooped from the side of the world where there had been apple trees and hills and water, a manor house, and the world"s best approximation of winter-that struck through him like an impaling blade, so he struggled to breathe around it. And it was not just his Heaven that lay destroyed. The unraveling extended wide and deep through the levels of the world.
Bened.i.c.k stood stunned for a moment and watched reality unwind itself into coils of smoke and nothing. After the first gasp, he drew himself up, away from the arched, transparent wall of the inspection tube, and tried to make himself stern for Chelsea. His weakness over so petty and personal a loss would lend her no steel, and he thought she needed whatever he could give her.
Still, he almost snapped at her when she disturbed the silence to ask, "Which way from here?"
"Further down," he said, and as he turned to lead her, an angel exploded into his perception.
When contact with Nova resumed, it pushed home with such force that it left Bened.i.c.k dizzy. The angel snapped into place like a tool into a socket, the world behind her. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she emerged from the world, for it seemed as if each strand of her hair, each branching of her circuitry, each blue-green strand and sheet like dripping strings of algae, leading back and down and away, receded into a complexity beyond what Bened.i.c.k could pa.r.s.e even with the a.s.sistance of his symbiont. Elsewhere in the continuum of Nova"s attention, he spotted the jewel-like nodes of Caitlin and Perceval-and felt the moment when their awarenesses registered him.
Deus ex machina, he thought, allowing a moment"s amus.e.m.e.nt before making sure his mask of severity was in place. Perhaps it was just his exhaustion, the weariness of the chase and the preceding adventures, but the fantasy comforted him more than he would have expected. He glanced over his shoulder at Chelsea, still silhouetted against the hatchway, her hair stirring with the change of air pressure, and said, "We"re online."
She grinned at him. "Sweet connectivity. h.e.l.lo, angel. What have you got for us?"
When Nova"s avatar shook her head, the strands of hair-or algae, or circuitry-rippled like a curtain of flame.
"We"ve got you back," she said, with an artificial life-form"s propensity for stating the obvious, "but we haven"t located the First Mate yet. However, the Captain and I are fairly certain we have identified the source of the nullities, and that it"s linked to Arianrhod"s destination. We therefore conjecture that we also know where Tristen is, or at least where he"s going to wind up, if he hasn"t lost her trail. Are you and Prince Bened.i.c.k well enough to continue the hunt, Princess Chelsea?"
"No crippling injuries," she responded, briefly touching the burned side of her face. It was healing well, curls of dead flesh sloughing in s.h.a.ggy leaves from the new, blue-flushed skin revealed underneath. Bits of dead membrane clung to her fingertips when she drew back her hand. "Yuck," she said.
"You"re shedding DNA everywhere," the angel observed.
"Cost of doing business," Chelsea said with a shrug. She wiped her hand on the trousers the carnivorous plants had provided. "It"s on file."
Bened.i.c.k shifted restlessly. "We have been proceeding south. I obtained a fix on Arianrhod"s previous location, and we have been tracking that, but more recent information would be welcome. The source of the nullities, if pleasantries are satisfied?"
"Not in the south of the world, as previously surmised, but south of its structure entirely," Nova said. "Beyond the Broken Holdes, and outside the span of the world."
Bened.i.c.k"s heart had already begun to ache, sickened by awakening knowledge. He glanced at Chelsea for support or confirmation, but his sister frowned blankly. Of course; Bened.i.c.k"s own fault for permitting it. Their father had been a secret-keeper, and she was far too young for the early days after the catastrophe to be anything to her but received history.
He steeled himself and said, "Does Caitlin know?"
"She"s been informed," Nova answered. "Am I to understand that you share her suspicions as to the source of the infection?"
Dry-mouthed but holding his face impa.s.sive, Bened.i.c.k nodded.
Chelsea brushed his elbow with the back of her fingers. "And how about those of us who didn"t pay attention to our tutors?"
"I very much expect your tutors were under strict instructions not to discuss any of this with you," Bened.i.c.k said. "You know those portraits Dad had nailed to the wall?"
She looked up at him, sister to brother, but without the trust he"d seen time and again among the members of Mean families-or even those of Engine. If she watched him like an attentive puppy, it was a puppy with every expectation of being kicked.
Do better.
He still had one daughter left. And this sister, too. He said, "Those were the older sisters, Cecelia"s daughters. The girls between Tristen and me."
"They were executed."
"So you have heard a little."
"Cautionary tales."
Bened.i.c.k chuckled without humor. "Father believed in making examples."
She nodded, encouraging him to continue. "Only two of them were executed," he clarified. "The youngest lived. She is Chief Engineer, and the mother of my daughter Perceval. But of the two who did die, the eldest was Caithness, who would have been Captain. And the middle daughter was Cynric the Sorceress."
Bened.i.c.k"s hands wanted to twitch defensively, as if to cover his breast, but with an effort of will he held them relaxed at his sides. Chelsea watched attentively, but he did not think she had registered his discomfort. If he could hide his thoughts and weaknesses from Alasdair Conn, he figured he could hide them from anyone. "Colorful nickname."
"Colorless woman," Bened.i.c.k said. "And I do not mean in terms of her personality, but she had a gift for making herself unnoticed, for going unremarked. For being-not at the heart of every conspiracy, because she was the center of none-but rather for being aware of things that rightfully n.o.body should have known. She was Alasdair Conn"s daughter; we all had the sense to make sure we had resources no one else knew the existence of. But more than that, she was a bioengineer. The head of biosystems. A good deal of the ship"s ecology grew out of her experiment-as did the colonies. Or rather, she created the first generation of the self-evolving form in which we recognize them today. When I was young, we did not have such things. Life was bounded in ways that would seem inconceivable to you now."
"I have heard from Dad, when he deigned to notice my existence, what lives of toil and hardship you all endured," Chelsea said, her mockery light enough not to sting.
Bened.i.c.k allowed himself a laugh. "Truly, our privation was terrible. But listen. The colonies were not all Cynric brought us. She personally engineered the ship-fish and the ship cats and a hundred other useful species-parrotlets, the vesper weaving-spiders, egglings. But her greatest accomplishment was to capture two creatures of alien origin. One was dissected and examined, the waste material"-the corpse-"recycled, and some of its adaptations incorporated into the world"s genomes. She used information from its necropsy to create the inducer viruses, and the colonies themselves."
Chelsea swallowed. "Was it sentient?"
"a.s.suredly. As for your inevitable next question-as to whether it was sapient, I cannot be certain that anyone chose to inquire."
"I see," she said.
He could see her thoughts cross her face as plainly as if she spoke them, read her confusion of questions as they tried to press all at once onto her tongue.
He took pity, and answered what he would have asked first. "It was deemed scientific research. No one was permitted to interfere." Whatever was in his smile, it made Chelsea glance down. "I hope Dad regretted that decision in the end."
"And what became of the second alien?"
Bened.i.c.k licked his lips. "The second Leviathan was infected with an inducer virus-a slaver colony designed from its dead mate"s body. Paralyzed, as a wasp paralyzes a spider. Then-against future need-it was placed in tow. I believe now that Cynric intended to use it as a last-ditch weapon against our father, but it"s possible she ran out of time, or even that her control was incomplete. Cynric told me this before she died." When she asked me to be her executioner.
"That"s where Arianrhod is going."
"I believe so."
"And that"s where the nullities are coming from," Nova said, with a widening gesture of her avatar"s hands. "They"re caused by the inducer virus. Repurposed and remade. Which is why I can"t see them."
"Nova?" Bened.i.c.k said. "Tell Caitlin I agree with her judgment, please."
"I have not told you her judgment."
"I antic.i.p.ate it," he said. Across from him, Chelsea folded her arms and leaned back against the hatchway door, frowning thoughtfully. He saw the shiver engendered by the contact crawl up her neck into her hair and die there. Holding her gaze through that of the immaterial angel, he finished, "Whether Leviathan has awakened fortuitously, or due to the supernova, or whether Cynric had something to do with it, it has become a factor again. And if it is sapient ... then I imagine it has been planning its vengeance for rather a long time."
"We should hurry," Chelsea said.
Bened.i.c.k was already turning down the corridor that would lead them to the Broken Holdes. "Never fear," he said. "We are."
The mammoth advanced before them, its broad, soft feet all but noiseless on the decking. Tristen was more aware of the whisking of its hair, the rub of strand over coa.r.s.e strand, than any sound from its footfalls. Amazing that something that must ma.s.s a quarter ton could move like a cloud.
It led them down corridors as barren as if they had been sterilized, metal floors and bulkheads eerily without life-even plant life. Or any sign that anything had ever grown here.
Tristen eyed the barren s.p.a.ce with jaundiced discomfort. "What purpose could this have served? It"s just wasted s.p.a.ce. There"s nothing here."
"It"s a clean zone," Samael said. "A buffer."
Mallory made a throat-clearing noise that Tristen suspected was largely symbolic. "What needs a buffer of lifeless sterility?"
"Well, that"s easy." Gavin flapped once for emphasis. "Something inimical to life. How far do we trust that mammoth?"
"Funny you should be the one asking," Tristen said, which earned him a gesture of irritation that would have been an eye roll if the basilisk"s eyes weren"t concealed behind sealed lids.
"You know what I mean."
The mammoth paused at the end of the corridor, trunk extended tentatively toward an interior lock. It stroked the handle. When Tristen and the rest hesitated ten steps back, the trunk hooked in an irritable beckoning gesture.
Apparently, "go first" fell among a First Mate"s duties. Tristen stepped up beside the mammoth. It brushed his gauntlet with its trunk, so the sensors reported leathery warmth, whiskery breath across the back of his hand.
In tones of exasperation, the mammoth calf said, "-"
"It wants me to open the lock," Tristen said.
"I heard it," Mallory answered. "Are you going to do what it tells you?"
Tristen glanced at Gavin. The basilisk sat, contrite and collected, seemingly unaffected by any concern. Grand sacrifices were not beyond Cynric.
She was the one sibling Tristen could make no claims to ever having understood. Ruthless with herself and others, prescient, chill, and alien-and yet she had always seemed possessed of great compa.s.sion. A compa.s.sion that never stopped her from making terrible choices when she deemed them necessary.
She"d have killed him without hesitation, with her own hand, if she thought it necessary. She would as swiftly-even more swiftly-have offered her own death, if she deemed it necessary. As, in the end, she had.
If Gavin retained enough of Cynric"s memories to be concerned by private knowledge of a potential trap, he"d also retain enough of her personality to walk blithely into one. On the other hand, if Cynric found it necessary to arrange a trap, it was possible that Tristen would agree with her reasons.
After all, he could not muster a particularly strong suite of arguments in favor of his own continued existence. And he thought now, with the clarity of hindsight, that if he had only had the courage or the moral convictions to join his half sisters in their uprising against Alasdair Conn, the world might have ended up a preferable place to live.
Tristen pressed his palm to the door and let it glide aside. And checked abruptly as a pair of battered shadows rounded a corner opposite.
Their forms were familiar. The taller folded his arms across his chest and c.o.c.ked his head, heavy black hair falling straight to his hammer-edged jaw. The wavy-haired woman beside him came two steps past before she drew up short, bouncing lightly on her tiptoes when she stopped. She turned her head slightly to keep him in her peripheral vision. She might move to the forefront, but she would follow her older brother"s lead.
"h.e.l.lo, Tristen," Bened.i.c.k said.
Tristen could as much as feel Mallory"s smirk, as if it heated the nape of his neck. "h.e.l.lo, Bened.i.c.k," the necromancer said.
Chelsea"s forehead wrinkled with interest, but Bened.i.c.k gave no sign of having noticed anything beyond common courtesy. "h.e.l.lo, Mallory. h.e.l.lo Samael, Gavin. And, um." He gestured to the mammoth.
Tristen shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"Mammoth," Bened.i.c.k said, as if that settled that. "Isn"t this convenient. I don"t suppose you were guided here by some coincidental carnivorous plant people?"
"A coincidental mammoth," Tristen said. "If anything can be said to be coincidental when Cynric is involved."
Tristen patted the mammoth on the shoulder, and it responded with a nearly subaudible rumble. Chelsea eyed it, frowning.
Bened.i.c.k made a religion of stoicism. Tristen did not expect his brother to react to the name, nor were his expectations confounded. Bened.i.c.k"s mouth might have thinned, but that was all. He closed the few steps between himself and Tristen, one hand extended to clasp wrists.
"Nova," Bened.i.c.k said out loud, "tell Perceval I found them."
Tristen felt something very like a click in his chest and knew it for relief. The contact of Bened.i.c.k"s hand was firm and confident. Tristen strove to make his the same. Because he was not Bened.i.c.k, he allowed himself a little smile of amus.e.m.e.nt at their performances. They were in truth their father"s sons. "Nova is with you?"
"We have contact," Bened.i.c.k said, his words confirmed a moment later when Tristen felt the angel"s attention fall upon him. "She"s not manifesting an avatar"-he raised an eyebrow at Samael"s speckled form-"so as not to draw hostile attention."
"Does she know where to go next?"
"I do," Bened.i.c.k said. "At least in general terms, though the question of how to get there is open." He glanced at Chelsea, who shook out her hair.
"Leviathan," she said.
Tristen had never seen it himself, but he understood that the blood draining from an amelanistic face could be a spectacular sight. Mallory actually grabbed his elbow, as if fearing he might topple over.
Mallory said, "Cynric and coincidences, indeed."
Gavin snorted. "Don"t look at me. Just because the puppeteer"s hand is up your a.s.s, it doesn"t mean you know what they are thinking."
Samael shot the basilisk a scathing glance, the snail-sh.e.l.l eye glinting dully. "Tell me about it."
Mallory unwound those fingers from Tristen"s arm and turned slowly to face Samael"s avatar. Quietly, breathing through a taut throat, the necromancer intoned, "He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be h.o.a.ry. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear."
"The key," Samael said.
Tristen looked from one to the other. "Did it unlock anything this time?"
The angel stared back, at first seemingly nonplussed by Tristen"s sarcasm. But glacially, as if with deliberation, the long vertical lines of his hound-creased face rearranged themselves into a grin.
"h.e.l.l, yes," the angel said, waving his immaterial hand. "Follow me."
Samael-looking much the worse for experience and worn thin-led Bened.i.c.k, his siblings, Mallory, and Gavin at a quick trot, down through still more barren corridors.
"This is the way to the Broken Holdes," Bened.i.c.k said, as his colony reminded him with images and maps of when he had been here before.
"To and through," Samael said. "Mallory"s code and the location have opened the way. We"re going outside."
"Into the belly of the Enemy," Bened.i.c.k said.
Mallory hid a laugh inside a sneeze. "Where the Leviathans dwell."
"Great," Chelsea said. "I hope there"s some undamaged armor down here somewhere, because Bened.i.c.k"s and mine ended up at the bottom of a compost heap. And it seems Mallory doesn"t have any either. I don"t know about you two, but I don"t fancy skinny-dipping in s.p.a.ce."
The mammoth calf touched her wrist and Chelsea startled. Bened.i.c.k-who a moment before had been fraternally pleased that she had the mature awareness to notice other people"s needs in tandem with her own-lurched forward to intervene and found Tristen"s hand on his chest.