He opened his wings, releasing the humans to their trajectory. Chelsea, Bened.i.c.k, and Mallory initiated burns, curving in flanking arcs, while Tristen huddled small, bent into himself, silent and still and undeviating from the course Gavin had set.
Steeling himself against the energy drain, Gavin opened and focused his eyes.
The savage light of the basilisk"s gaze sliced through the disintegrating cage surrounding Leviathan, struck the beast"s mottled hide, and left a cloud of dust and vaporized stone to sublimate on the empty breath of the Enemy. Tristen plunged through it, an abrasive hiss caressing the skin of his armor, the roughness transmitted as a p.r.i.c.kling sc.r.a.pe. He resisted the urge to block his face with his arm to protect it-the armor was perfectly capable of keeping him safe, but all those animal reflexes didn"t know any better-and instead extended both hands before him, left fist clenched on Mirth"s hilt and right palm bracing the pommel. He made himself a blade, a living spear, a ma.s.s driven behind an infinitely fine point.
Around him, colonies sparked and glittered, his allies and family risking themselves to shape a distraction. Tristen allowed them only the peripheries of his attention. He knew where he was aiming, and his aim must be perfectly true. Something shattered, spinning, on his left. He feared it was armor; he feared more it was flesh.
He did not glance aside.
One thousand meters. Seven fifty. Five hundred. Trajectory confirmed, Tristen commenced his burn.
Bened.i.c.k had never expected to find himself defending an angel. But here he was, fighting at Samael"s side-fighting as Samael"s vanguard!-when Samael was far more adapted to this particular conflict than Bened.i.c.k himself. The angel had to stay safe a little longer, though, and so he huddled inside Mallory, and Bened.i.c.k defended two intelligences in one form. As Bened.i.c.k groped through the swirling clouds of dust and nanotech, he had no difficulty losing himself in the rhythm and savagery of conflict. It was his grace and shame, he thought, that he could always find peace and clarity in the midst of ruin.
"I see him!" Gavin said sharply, in Bened.i.c.k"s ear and for Samael"s hearing. Bened.i.c.k held his concentration, turned, and parried the foray of a voracious colony with an arm of his own symbiote. It tore at him, but Bened.i.c.k reinforced, surrounded, and a moment later Chelsea was there to back him up, her colony a formless destroying presence amid the raging, invisible skirmishes that surrounded them.
Further back, a twist of energy glittered, elusive in the light-wreathed textures of the nebula. Driving for them, identifiable by the taste of its energy signature as the wreck of an angel. Also, it was careful to stay well back from the front where Nova and the alien colonies battled, as marked by sparks and dazzling scars. Bened.i.c.k understood that it didn"t dare touch an angel who could relay direct instructions from the Captain.
But it could come and fight them-or so it was meant to think.
"Asrafil," Mallory said. As the angel closed the distance, the necromancer"s armor began to vomit forth Samael, in the form of ropes of savage light.
Gavin threw himself into the fray, linked with Samael"s colony, driving as much of himself into the battered angel as he dared. I am behind you, Angel. Take what you will. Drive through.
Samael"s acceptance flowed back down the connection, his determination and the flare of outrage as Asrafil spotted him and began to withdraw. Spurn your Captain, construct?
But challenged, Asrafil only fled faster. For a moment, Gavin pitied him-wouldn"t everyone prefer freedom of choice?-but then something rose up in him, a long-concealed subroutine of betrayal, and he leapt forward into Samael, through him, pushing forward though hostile colonies frayed his edges and gnawed his wings to electronic marrow.
It didn"t hurt, not as Gavin understood and half remembered human hurting. But it felt strange, and his reflex was to withdraw, defend himself, pull close. Instead he made himself the head of an arrow, with Samael the shaft behind.
He"ll take us apart, Gavin said, just to hear Samael"s mocking laugh. Within him, he felt something ticking. Sizzling. As if the touch of Samael"s colony under these conditions of war had activated a long-quiescent program, and now they were conjoined-partnered-in ways Gavin had never antic.i.p.ated.
Then he"ll get what he deserves, the angel answered. Gavin felt Samael"s long-archived memories flaring bright. A plan, something held in abeyance and secret, seared through their conjoined ident.i.ty.
Together, they gathered themselves and plunged into Asrafil"s sphere of control. Asrafil fled, drawing up his skirts, but he could not run fast nor far enough. They burned into him, broke through his wards, and ... ... detonated.
Asrafil screamed as the virus downloaded into his core.
Leviathan was hot at his heart, a simmering heat from which Tristen"s armor offered only partial protection. The heat was an aid as much as a torment, though, for Tristen let his armor boots adhere to stone, and it gave him the leverage to hew at Leviathan"s core as if he hacked with an ax. Chunks of stone shining with a blue foxlight sprayed out of the hole he chopped, came apart into swirls of matter as the battling colonies appropriated and consumed them.
Through those same soles of his boots, Tristen heard Leviathan screaming. And something else, like a shard of something deadly and foreign lodged in the flesh of the beast. He could feel Arianrhod in there, feel how Leviathan had surrounded and subsumed her. And more, he felt her moving now, coming to the surface, sent for him full of the alien poison that, in altered form, touched his blood as well.
He raised Mirth once more, and the rock before him splintered out, spinning away in cascades and shards, scattering off the faceplate of his helm and chipping the reflective surface of his armor. A swath of ebony cut free of the Leviathan"s hide-an unblade truncated but still painfully familiar-and a woman stood free behind it, dragging herself up in the hole he had made. Someone caught his wrist in a grip harder than the stone he swung against.
-Grandfather,-Arianrhod said.-Enough. I speak for the beast.- Perceval"s awareness flinched back, confused, withdrawing. If she were wearing her body, she would have windmilled her arms, but as it was she merely tumbled in confusion, out of control, disoriented, seeking something on which to focus her stumbling mind. She slammed up against something hollow and malevolent, circling the confines of her body, her own mind. Walling her out of her own senses and awareness.
She looked up in that uns.p.a.ce and saw the shadow of Ariane Conn smiling down on her again.
Her features had changed, but Tristen knew her. He knew the way she moved, and even if the skin and bones were different, he knew the way the bones of her face lay under the skin.
Something else enfolded her as Tristen turned. She was naked to the Enemy, blue and ablaze, but there was more to it than just her energy, or her colony, or the Leviathan"s contamination. She was wrapped in white light, a cowl like a raptor"s beak, a cloak like the mantle of wings, old Charity a painful dark rip in all that brightness. It settled over her, pulled snug, soaked into her glowing skin.
She grew taller, as he watched, sparer, attenuated. Her storm-shadow hair grew fine and dark. He knew her. Not too far from where he stood, even in the thick of battle, he could feel Bened.i.c.k knowing her, too, turning from his fight and coming in a rush.
Cynric Conn blinked. Her fingers opened, releasing his arm. "Let it be," she said aloud, and the Enemy"s empty breath carried her voice. "Leave it be. Leviathan has served his purpose, brother mine. Leviathan has suffered enough."
Tristen drew his blade back. "You"re still Arianrhod. And the beast has possessed you."
She spread her hands, the empty one and the one with the unblade in it. "O Brother, you have it backward. I possessed the beast, long ago. And now that our father is gone, and the world is in motion again, I"m here to see us to salvation. Sheathe your sword, Tristen Tiger. Welcome your sister back from the dead, cold realms of the Enemy, and let this poor mutilated monster go."
She was as he"d remembered her, no ghost of a Sorceress but the absolute item, chill and precise with her long hands motionless before her hips, the left one folded inside the right.
"I do not trust you, Arianrhod," he said.
Ariane reached out her hand, or the metaphor of her hand, and Perceval flinched back, flailing. The imaginary fingers could have closed around her, lifted her up-but she shouted for Nova with all her mind and suddenly someone was there beside her. Not Nova, but rather the necromancer, Mallory, who threw up arms like a barricade and shoved Ariane"s groping fingers wide.
Ariane grabbed again, and again Mallory was too strong for her-but not by much. Perceval saw the necromancer wince, twist, grimace with effort as once more Ariane"s hand came down.
Perceval just stood, awed, hands at her sides, watching.
The third time Ariane reached out, she pinioned Mallory"s arms and lifted the necromancer into the air, swinging the kicking figure from side to side.
"Dammit, Captain," the necromancer yelled, each syllable rattled out between jerks. "We"re in your head! Get control of her!"
But she"s so big, Perceval thought. She"s so much bigger than me.
Did that matter?
Maybe not. If they were in Perceval"s head, maybe Ariane only looked so large.
Perceval imagined herself very far away, back away in the dark confines of her mind, so Ariane looked tiny enough to pick up between her fingers. And then she imagined herself close, and Ariane really so small.
Perceval pinched her up, careful not to squeeze, careful not to squish the microscopic Mallory clutched in Ariane"s rattling fist.
"Ariane," Perceval said. "I want you to put the necromancer down."
Arianrhod/Cynric smiled. "Nor should you. But who other than me could have arranged this? Who else would have brought a child of the line of Sparrow here, and filled her form with the memories of the one person who can best help you now? Who guided you, Tristen, and our brother and sister, and the angel and the implement who held my memories? Who brought you through the abattoir in safety? Who introduced you to Dorcas? Who sent the mammoth, man, and all from the very grave?
"Leviathan dreams true futures, Tristen, after the nature of his kind. And I infected him and his dreaming long ago, and used them to dream you to me and the world to possibilities other than destruction. Trust me when I tell you that, for the nonce, you will find no Arianrhod here."
"Have you eaten her?" Carefully, neutrally, Tristen began disengaging his boots from the surface of Leviathan. Before him, the hole he and Gavin had gnawed in its side was sealing, seething at the bottom with the blue ropes of colonies.
"No," she said. "She"s alive. I"m just borrowing her for now, because she"s here and Leviathan remade her for me. And if she weren"t, would you kill your granddaughter"s body to be sure?"
"I"d kill her for her crimes," he said, and winced at Cynric"s frown.
"Oh, yes," his sister said. "Her crimes. So much worse than yours or mine. Look at the thing you"re standing on, My Brother, and tell me any Conn has the right to live."
"Touche," Tristen said, and shook Mirth free of blue blood before he put it away. "So a.s.suming for the moment that you are my sister-and this would be very like her-what was the purpose of this charade?"
She smiled. She held out her fist, turned it over, and opened her hand. "Leviathan knows the universe," she said, as he watched a glittering star map of impossible brilliance unfurl above her palm. "I have built us an astrogator, Brother Mine. I have made us a way home. Now draw out your blade again."
"You told me to put it up," Tristen said. "What would you have me butcher now?"
"Butcher nothing, but part a chain. Cut loose Leviathan. Let him return to his people, for we have abused him sore."
"He wants to destroy us," Tristen said. "And I cannot say I blame him."
Cynric shook her narrow head. "He cannot have his vengeance, though I am without doubt the one most deserving of it. He will have to live with only freedom."
And all around them, the lights of combat were dying away.
Later, when Cynric had led them back inside, Tristen came up beside Bened.i.c.k and rested one hand lightly on his shoulder. "I knew you were standing behind me."
Bened.i.c.k glanced sidelong at him and nodded. "I thought you might not want to handle it. But then it turned out it didn"t need to be handled. Not that way."
"Not yet," Tristen said, watching Cynric"s slender, white-garbed spine retreat down the corridor before them. She moved fast. He stepped up his pace, aware of Bened.i.c.k doing the same, of Chelsea and Mallory following. Aware of the way Mallory"s hand came up to one shoulder, as if to steady a pa.s.senger who was not there. "What about when she gives Arianrhod back?"
Bened.i.c.k shook his head. "Cynric"s right. What has she done that"s worse than you or me?"
"It"s not about worse," Tristen answered. "It"s about staying alive, not about what"s right or wrong."
"Maybe it should be," Bened.i.c.k said, and to that Tristen had no response except a short nod, curt and painful.
"Come on," he said. "It"s a f.u.c.king long walk home."
In the warmth of the bridge, Cynric Conn walked forward across violets to meet the Captain. The Captain stood and watched her. In her borrowed flesh, with her borrowed spirit, Cynric knelt, and Perceval felt a shiver of recognition, a cold wash of sweat as the hair parted over her nape and fell in brown streamers to either side. Perceval"s uncle, Tristen, stood behind her on the left side. Her father, Bened.i.c.k, stood behind her on the right. Caitlin Conn, her mother, was in Engineering where she belonged, overseeing the removal of the last collars and clamps from the hide of Leviathan.
The Sorceress extended something in her two hands. A scabbarded sword with a rough, improvised hilt affixed.
Perceval did not reach out her hand. "I do not want that."
"It is Charity," Cynric said, raising her eyes in surprise. "The last of its kind."
What, did she not foresee this also? Perceval waved it away in irritation. She did not want a sword, and she did not want Cynric. What she wanted was Gavin back, but she would not say as much, for Captains did not weep. And if she said the basilisk"s name, there would be no end to her tears. So instead she said, "It was Tristen"s; give it to him."
But Tristen demurred. "I prefer Mirth, as it happens." He patted the hilt of the blade. "Give it to Bened.i.c.k."
Bened.i.c.k shook his head. "Give it to Caitlin," he said. "She probably actually misses hers."
When Bened.i.c.k went to Caitlin, he knew she had been waiting for him because she was at such great pains to seem that she had not. She was alone in a booth at the center of a half-repaired Central Engineering, feet up on a console, studying schematics and frowning.
"Better?" he asked, having entered without knocking.
"Fair," she said. "Now that nothing"s chewing the world apart from the edges, we"re getting some actual repairs done. Have you talked to Perceval?"
He nodded, tightly. In the long run, he thought the new, fey Perceval with so many ancient souls behind her eyes might even be a match for Cynric the Sorceress, in wisdom if not in craft. "Perceval sent you something," he said, and held out the long nano-swagged parcel.
Caitlin looked from it to him, and did not reach out for it. "Tristen didn"t claim it?"
Bened.i.c.k laid the unblade down across her console. She could unwrap it later. "You should go and talk to our daughter in person."
Caitlin nodded, eyes bright. "I will."
"I"m not sure how she"ll be," he said honestly, stepping forward to stand beside her chair. "I don"t know where we go from here."
He touched her naked hand with his own so his colony could give her the map, the one he"d been saving to deliver personally since Cynric had imparted it to him.
"It"s okay," Caitlin said. She tipped her head over her shoulder at Jsutien, who was visible through the gla.s.s. "Wherever the h.e.l.l it is, we know how to get there, now."
acknowledgments.
Thanks very much to all the people who helped get this writ: Sarah Monette, Cindy and Robert Wood, Amanda Downum, Jodi Meadows, Jaime Lee Moyer, Emma Bull, Delia Sherman, Anne Groell Keck, Jennifer Jackson, Michael Curry, Leah Bobet, and more.
Also by Elizabeth Bear.
UNDERTOW.
HAMMERED.
SCARDOWN.
WORLDWIRED.
CARNIVAL.