Gavin resettled his wings. "Does that mean Tristen won"t be meeting us here after all?"
"No. Caitlin says his ETA is only a few hours now. It will be easier to connect here."
Gavin bobbed his head at the end of his neck like the ball at the end of a flexible rod. "We"ll have to work fast, then."
The necromancer only kicked a clod of earth, gesturing at the empty orchards. "I could have saved these people."
"As you did Perceval and Rien. If you had been here, the flu might not have killed so many."
An angry nod moved curls against Gavin"s wing. He cupped it wide, as if to shelter Mallory"s head, angry in his own turn that all he had to offer was a useless protective gesture. "They were Conns. Would they have accepted your help?"
"It"s not the Conns. It"s the servants." A declaration Gavin met with silence, until Mallory added, "We should examine the house before deciding everyone is dead." That last was said desultorily, as if Mallory a.s.sumed already what they would find.
Still, they found the direction and went, coming at last through orchards and gardens-all busy with the task of healing themselves for a harvest that might never happen-to the great house of Rule. It was not an imposing edifice, being built simply into the bulkheads of the Heaven, so the effect was rather of a castle around a courtyard. Once they emerged from the pa.s.sageway that led them in, walls pocked with openings rose on every side toward a sky full of windows.
"If you were central biosystems, where would you be?" Gavin asked. A richly oleaginous scent drew his attention. In addition, he could just make out a faint, mechanical whine.
"Some expert system you turned out to be."
"I"m a power tool. You"re the one with a head full of dead Conn. You tell me."
Mallory snorted. "If you were the last small band of desperate survivors, where would you be?"
"In the kitchens," Gavin answered. With one wing, he pointed to the turning exhaust fan set low in the wall before them. "In the kitchens."
Mallory could move fast, given the right provocation. Gavin allowed the wind of the necromancer"s pa.s.sage to lift him from his perch, beating heavily in pursuit. Mallory ducked into the main entrance of the house, an arched tunnel whose curved walls echoed back the thumping of Gavin"s wings. They ran through hallways, pelted down a flight of stairs, charged unwavering past a long gallery of portraits. Together they descended, Mallory choosing stairwells over corridors and left turns over right, until they leveled out in a corridor flanked by open chambers. The unsealed doors revealed coffin sleepers four to a room, racked in vertical sets of two against each wall. Servants" quarters.
Gavin-who had never been here before-remembered. Remembered the shape of the s.p.a.ce, the doors, the cubicles. The irising spiral leading to food services, beyond. He backwinged, but there was no place to land and consider. He knew this place, knew it in every shred of metal and polymer that made up his form.
On the right, there would be a pa.s.sageway, concealed by doors that might seem-to the casual eye-merely a part of the corridor wall. Beyond that, Gavin remembered, were the elevators that led to the laboratories and workstations of central biosystems.
The memory unsettled him. It itched, so he wished he could claw at it.
"The bio labs are that way," he said, with a lash of his tail.
"I thought you didn"t know the layout."
"I don"t. But that doesn"t change the fact that the bio labs are that way."
"Correct," said Mallory, still trotting. "We"ll check that after we"re done in the kitchen. Which should be right about-"
The door was unmistakable, a heavy affair sealed tight, with its air lock lights burning green for a good seal. Mallory leaned a shoulder against it and cupped a hand between one ear and the portal.
Gavin looped to pa.s.s Mallory"s other ear. "If everybody in Rule died of an engineered influenza, there could be contaminated bodies inside. Is it safe to open that?"
"Is anything?"
"I"m immune," the basilisk said. "I was only concerned for you."
"I promise not to die on you."
A child"s answer-but that was Mallory. Sulking, Gavin settled to a rail against the wall and watched while the necromancer examined the door and the s.p.a.ce before it.
Gavin"s beak was not made for frowning. He converted the urge to a head bob instead. "How do you mean to get the door open?"
With a sidelong glance, Mallory said, "Technology."
Magic, rather. Which was to say, the layers and layers of abstract knowledge that came as the arcane cost of being a necromancer. Whatever the necromancer did to subvert the locks, in only seconds the portal irised wide.
Gavin flapped up to perch beside it. "Charming," he said.
A complicated rearrangement of forehead muscles indicated that perhaps Mallory could have cared less, but it would have taken an effort. "It"s what we do. Gavin, break this open."
Behind the irising door was another panel, one that looked as if it had been set in place with great haste. Sealed from within, Gavin now saw. Wedged shut, and there were dents and scratches-signs someone had tried to break through it without success.
Mallory turned, an eyebrow raised, and said singsong, "Oh, familiar demon?"
Whatever the construction, Gavin"s eyebeams illuminated all: the secondary decompression door, the obvious air seal, the bright marks of welding where the panel met the bulkhead. If you meant to conceal your presence from an aware and seeking enemy, it was worth nothing at all. But if your goal was isolation from a spreading contagion, this was exactly the thing.
"Here," Gavin said, settling with flipped wings on the necromancer"s shoulder. He breathed deep-a lungful of air he did not need and would not use, except to speak.
"Will it open?"
Mallory, trying remembered codes, made a dismissive gesture. "The comm is smashed, the door is welded to the bulkhead, and the old codes I have are not bypa.s.sing the lock."
They would have been changed. Which meant anything Gavin remembered, in that fragmentary manner that Gavin sometimes seemed to be remembering things, would be of very little use. But memories were not his only skill.
"So did they smash the comm before they entered, so they would not have to hear the plaints of the dying?" he asked. "Or was it broken by the same desperate outsider who left the dents, in frustration or revenge when they would not open the door?"
"When we get in, we can talk to any survivors and find out." Mallory thumped a fist on the door in irritation. Its ma.s.s was such that it m.u.f.fled the sound dramatically.
"The new angel?" Gavin suggested. He hopped closer to the controls, tracing the wiring by feel. "If whoever is in there is alive and aware-"
"The Captain says Nova cannot reach inside the door." Another thump, this one sharper, as if Mallory hoped that pounding on the door would draw out any denizens. "It"s sealed against unincorporated colonies. There"s an electrostatic boundary field."
"I think breaking the comm was punitive," Gavin confirmed, "because the door has been shatterbolted as well as welded. Whoever is in there is sealed in. They can"t come out. They can"t change their minds. You would have to cut through."
"Ariane." Mallory shoved a fistful of hair out of narrowed eyes, voice dripping loathing. With one crooked thumb, the necromancer traced a bright scar on the door. "Her hatchetwork, maybe. Then nothing works."
"Lasers work," Gavin corrected. "Shall I?"
Recollecting dignity, the necromancer stepped nonchalantly aside. "Go to it."
There might be living people on the other side of the door. Gavin aimed his gaze high and unsealed his eyes. The light sprang forth, cutting-bright, and metal sizzled where it fell. It would be safest to burn through the shatterbolts and the welds; the door should swing on its hinges, then. And if it failed to swing, he could burn through the hinges, too.
It was a heavy door-and heavily armored-and the burning took time. By the scorch marks around the perimeter, Mallory and Gavin were not the first to try, but whoever had come before them had been devoid of the a.s.sistance of a basilisk.
The last shatterbolt failed with a crack like one of those tree limbs untwisting, and the door sagged. Gavin backwinged, hopping away from the area where it might fall if the hinges snapped. But other than an unnerving creak, there was nothing.
"Ready," Mallory said. The necromancer had a.s.sumed a defensive, nonthreatening posture-relaxed but balanced, hands held low. Gavin extended one wing, hair-fine tendrils gliding from the feathertips, and from a distance of four meters hooked the edge of the door and levered it open. The hinges were not so damaged that it dragged against the floor, which was good, because while Gavin had the strength to support it, the ma.s.s was another question.
He had been half expecting the charge and so was ready for it when it came. Three running footsteps warned them before a stout green-coated person barreled through the door, waving a sizzling, quarter-meter mono-knife like a child slashing at stick-swords. That tool would sever even Gavin"s wings, and as he stretched them into filamentous nets and flipped them around the released attacker, he was careful to avoid the edge. Fortunately, the lunging individual had been a Mean until recently, and sie had not yet made sense of hir new body. The nets enmeshed hir, tangled hir wrists and forearms, bound hir hands tight against the hilt of the knife, and slowly dragged them down, however sie might strain.
Muscle and bone were no match for Gavin"s strength. Before Mallory stepped forward, he had the prisoner pressed against the wall, bracing himself with stiff filaments to prevent hir from simply dragging or shoving him. Sie outma.s.sed him exponentially, but when he could wedge himself, leverage won.
Deftly, Mallory moved forward and relieved the prisoner of hir weapon. As the necromancer stroked the control in the blade"s hilt, the sizzle of air against the blade abated. Mallory tucked it through a clothing loop and sighed, pressing fingers to forehead as if in pain.
Mallory said, "Who are you?"
The servant, or former servant-by the cl.u.s.ter on hir collar, a chief of household-squared hir shoulders. Hir eventual words confirmed Gavin"s deduction. "I am Head."
Hir jaw quivered when sie spoke, as if in naming hirself sie were struck by the weight of implications that the name no longer carried. "You might kill me now, if that"s your intending. I won"t serve Lady Ariane. But spare the others. They only did as I ordered. I am responsible. The treason is mine."
"Ariane is dead," Mallory said.
Gavin watched the emotions contort Head"s expression: relief, disbelief, apprehension. Fingers shaking, sie reached to hir collar, touched the cl.u.s.ter there, moved as if to uncatch it, then hesitated. "Then who is Commodore?"
"There is no Commodore," Mallory said. "Perceval Conn is Captain."
Head"s eyes closed. "She escaped." Then opened, intent and worried. "Rien?"
Gavin did not envy Mallory the moment of thought before the hesitant headshake that followed. Nor did he envy Head the moment of antic.i.p.ation, the potential for hope.
"I"m sorry," Mallory said. "She saved the world. Not that that makes it better." Head"s body jerked sharply, as if with an arrested shudder, but sie made no sound. Someone"s eyes appeared briefly around the rim of the broken door, fingers enfolding the edge. Whoever they belonged to, they vanished back into the kitchen behind Head"s slashing gesture. Yes. Whoever sie had saved, sie had saved because they had obeyed hir without question.
Head said, "A real Captain?"
"Sealed and confirmed."
"If Perceval is Captain, who leads the house of Conn?" A businessy question.
Mallory seemed uncertain of how to answer, glancing at Gavin with a questioning head-tilt.
"Tristen is eldest," Gavin said.
This time, Head put a hand flat against the bulkhead behind hir, as if hir knees felt too unsteady to take hir weight. "Tristen lives." So flatly that Gavin could not read pleasure or dismay in the tone. "In truth?"
"Tristen lives," Mallory confirmed. "As does Bened.i.c.k Conn, and Caitlin, who is the Chief Engineer. Tristen is on his way here now, and will be in Rule within a few hours. We come in advance of him."
Head smiled, broad and certain, and shoved the cl.u.s.ter on hir collar hard against hir throat, as if to seat it there more firmly. "Then we have work to be getting on with."
7.
back into rule
The darkest part of the kingdom of Satan is that which is without the Church of G.o.d.
-THOMAS HOBBES, Leviathan
There had been twelve who survived being sealed into the kitchen in addition to Head, and all of them were hale, if restless and dingily dressed. Head set them to work at once, readying the house for occupancy. Gavin felt it would be cruel to tell hir that the chances that Tristen was home to stay were slim, so he held his silence. He was surprised that Mallory did as well.
They would have insisted upon feeding Mallory, but the necromancer refused, more concerned with being shown to central biosystems at once. Head had keys and codes to all the house, and brought them hirself. When Gavin identified the most direct route, by the servant"s stair, Mallory insisted on it, though Head fussed about inappropriateness.
While they walked, Mallory questioned an expansive but cautious Head about hir captivity.
"I had hoped for Prince Bened.i.c.k," sie admitted. "He"d not let Ariane kill us all. Which is not to say, Honored, that your appearance was not welcomed, and timely!"
"Indeed," Mallory said. "It was resourceful of you to survive as you did. Ariane had an angel on a leash when she brought her bioweapon to Rule. Whose idea was the electrostasis? It"s what truly protected you. And how did you manage to become Exalt, locked away like that? You wouldn"t have survived as Means."
Head turned, astonished. "But Honored, it wasn"t anybody"s idea. It was the other angel."
Surmounting the stair back into Rule was one of the more surreal experiences in Tristen"s long and storied existence. He kept a hand on the banister, not because he needed the a.s.sistance, but because he needed the stability of something cool and real pressed against his palm.
When last he"d left here, he had not expected it to be a journey of decades to see him back. He had not expected to be lost in darkness for the duration-but then, who ever did? And when he was trapped, sleeping in guano and roaches, gnawing raw meat, he had not expected ever to come home again. He had retreated into an animal self he barely remembered.
Barely chose to remember. Because should he want it, each moment of the endless wearing march of hours was crystalline and perfectly akin in his symbiont"s memory. The same symbiont whose resources he used to manipulate his neurochemistry, calm the constant wash of anxiety and jagged edges that rolled like broken gla.s.s under the false floor he built himself. You"re going to have to deal with that eventually.
Eventually, sure. Someday. When I have time.
Perhaps by then, the pa.s.sage of days (or better, years) would have worn some of the sharp-shattered edges down. Like the pain of so many years spent without any expectation of ever returning to Rule again, and certainly not as its master.
And yet here was the stair, and here was the rail, and there were the white and golden and brown cascades of mushrooms swathing the walls like frozen waterfalls. The scent was strong and familiar. Heartening.
He reached out left-handed, broke off the rim of a shiitake, and tucked it into his mouth. He didn"t bite down, just pressed it between teeth and lips and cheek, tasting the sweet musky moisture. It tasted of childhood and escape, of the places you could vanish to where your father would be too busy to come looking. The places where even a royal child could find a modic.u.m of freedom.
He swallowed the mushroom unchewed, and went into Rule.