Chill

5 pinioned in terrible darkness

At first, the trail was plain. Benedick went armored, careful, skirting the edge of a vast causeway that connected Engine to the world at large. This was not how he, Tristen, and Rien had entered the Heaven at the end of the world. They had come to Engine running flat-out, along the bank of a poisoned river inhabited by--possessed of--Caitlin's helpful familiar demon, a djinn named Inkling. But the river was dead now, Inkling consumed like all his brethren into the new angel of the world.

Benedick found he missed Inkling, even if the river had nearly killed his daughter, his brother, and himself. It wasn't a reactor-coolant leak's fault that it was poisonous, any more than a snake was to blame for being a snake--or the Enemy for being the Enemy. One did not have to blame or fear a thing to treat it with respect.

He tried to remember that he could feel the same about the angel. It was not the angel's fault that Rien had died to make it real. And now--with the angel's intervention, with the controlled release of radiation-isolating microbes--the poisoned river could be made clean, even this water reclaimed.

It would be good to reclaim something.

But this was not the time to be concerned about such things. Now, he had the arch of metal sky overhead. Some of the shielding panels were closed against the cold of the Enemy beyond, some jammed open so the chilly green light of the shipwreck nebula shone through, a few of the brightest stars visible beyond. He had the turf underfoot, thickly planted in dandelions and clover, still healing from the trauma of acceleration, the stems of grass here and there bent by a careless foot. He had the chill, thin air, not properly circulated, and so potentially still holding a scent.

He had the spotted-and-striped, inquisitive toolkit, its fluffy tail jerking like a carelessly cracked whip as it sniffed delicately between blades of grass, bending them aside with fragile-seeming hands, tremulous fingers cast from high-impact ceramic for strength. Carbon monofilament tendons moved beneath the little animal's skin.

Benedick kept half his attention on his sensors and all his armor's weapons online. Occasionally, the toolkit turned to him and made a soft prrt, as if to assure itself that he was following close and paying heed.

This was not its primary function, but its sensitive olfactory, tactile, and visual receptors--optimized for locating tiny malfunctions in elaborate machinery--were adequate to the task. It was needed; whosoever had taken Arianrhod had left little trace of their passage. Benedick knew Arianrhod's knightly skills--the equal of his own--and if she were moving under her own power the trail indicated no diminishment.

So whoever had released her was her equal, and either armored or using some other countermeasure, because the toolkit could not trace that individual's scent. Benedick trailed on--watchful, speculating. The farther he traveled, the worse the environmental damage became. When they came to a point where there was no egress from the causeway, he lifted the toolkit off the ravaged turf and let it snuggle against his neck. Here he broke into a distance-eating jog that was as fast as he could move while remaining observant to tripbeams and traps. Eventually, the causeway separated into five great branch tunnels joined like the fingers of a hand.

Benedick knew from experience that once one traveled a step or two into any given path, relative gravity was established. Each causeway then curved to follow a divergent path: one overhead, one branching each left and right, one leading toward his feet, and one that would continue directly forward. But he paused before entering the lobby where they connected, cautious. All the Conns in the world were not dead, and Arianrhod's history of alliances with his family was ... complex and multigenerational. And his family were nothing if not dangerous.

Benedick pinched his lower lip, considering. The broad lobby before him was designed neither for defense nor stealth, but rather for ceremony. Once-stately palms, shattered now, strained at their root-cables. The soil they'd helped stabilize lay in clods and heaps, torn vegetation raising the scent of rot. But though the fronds of the palms curled and crisped at the tips, a haze of green so pale it was almost silver already covered the harrowed mounds, hair-fine blades of grass seeking the light.

There had been waterfalls here once, pools beneath the palms, a branch of the River that ran clean and fresh to welcome visitors to Engine. Benedick suspected the outflow was pooling now, undercutting the soil, unless the hull had been ruptured somewhere beneath the dirt and precious water was sublimating into space. Or unless the angel had already managed to allocate resources to begin repairs. Sealing the hull would be its first priority.

He scanned the space, checking for heartbeat and machinery noises as well as body heat. There were insects, birds--such as a flock of gray-cheeked parrotlets, their green wings flurrying as they darted from broken tree to broken tree. Strident cries evoked a memory of ancient speech; some of the tiny birds were long-Exalted, and so old their mimicked language was the language of the Builders.

For a moment, Benedick paused and listened, glad they had survived. With gentle hands he unwound the toolkit from its roosting place about his throat, stroked its pointed face, then crouched to set it down. It left the cage of his hands tentatively, exactly as if it felt trepidation. He supposed it was possible that it did.

It paused at the threshold, ears pricked and tail jerking, and sniffed in several directions before it chanced the open space beyond.

Benedick covered its progress, but no threat materialized. Instead, the toolkit minced out into the devastated lobby, whiskers twitching on either side of its creamy freckled muzzle. About twenty meters in, it paused in the shelter of a destroyed tree and whuffled around the base of the stump, casting for the scent it had trailed this far.

Still crouched by the threshold, Benedick was not surprised that it found nothing. No footprints bruised tender shoots or depressed moist earth. It was possible that Arianrhod had passed this way with a flier or in machinery. Whichever, it was irrelevant. Benedick had lost the trail.

One hand extended, he clucked to the toolkit, but something else had attracted its attention. It sat up, counterbalanced by the fluffy tail, while Benedick clucked again. He snapped his fingers, a sharp bright sound in the armor, and said, urgently, "Toolkit."

It hopped forward, shielding itself in broken palm fronds, where its irregular stripes and spots camouflaged it. The toolkit, despite having melded with the pattern of light and shadows to the point of vanishing, gave an urgent squeak. A flicker of motion showed as it glanced over its shoulder, oil-shiny eyes gleaming. When it looked back, Benedick followed the line of its gaze and deduced that whatever held its attention so intently must be advancing along the corridor that would lead perspective-up. The one that, if followed, would lead eventually--and through many adventures--to Rule.

With his left hand, Benedick sealed his helm.

He had not long to wait. An armored female figure hove into view down the curve of the tunnel--feet and legs and hips, waist and arms, chest and face. Benedick knew her from her stride before she stood half revealed, and lowered the weapon he'd trained on her shadow. He unsealed his helm again to reveal his face--a sign that he did not mean to provoke combat--but he did not depower.

Instead, he strode forward across the lobby to meet his sister, calling her name.

Chelsea Conn paused at the bottom of the serpentine curve of the passageway, one hand resting on the hilt of a blade at her hip. Not an unblade--there had never been many of those, and as far as Benedick knew they had all been unfashioned when the angel was made--but an impressive weapon nonetheless, potent and storied enough to bear the virtue-name Humility. She studied him a moment, as was her wont, her narrow face unreadable.

He had always fancied that, at such moments, she was deciding what she would feel. When, after slightly longer than a second, a broad smile broke across her face, it did nothing to disabuse him of the conceit.

"Brother!" she cried boldly, tossing her braids back out of her armor, and strode forward with a springing step.

They embraced with a great clatter of reinforced ceramic, armor rattling on armor, fists pounding backplates, making a show of their glad warrior cries. At least from Benedick's perspective, it was not dissembling.

Chelsea wore a gray and violet color-shift, so bands of lavender and plum shimmered across the surface of her armor like light reflecting off opals. She made him wonder a great deal, did Chelsea Conn. She was closed up like a bud, giving no hint of the leaves or petals within. Among all the things he wondered--what she wanted, what she feared--the one currently most on his mind was if she'd chosen those colors with intention, to tweak their father's sensibilities.

Although it was entirely possible she'd never known that Caithness had worn them as well. Alasdair Conn had gone to great lengths to expunge his eldest daughters from the family record, so Benedick would not be surprised if Chelsea had never heard the name.

He could ask her. Perhaps now that their father was dead, he would find the time.

He set her back at arm's length--he was considerably taller--and said, "You came from Rule."

She nodded. This time, he did not think the thumbprint shadow that darkened the space between her brows was calculated, but it was too fleeting to be sure of what it meant. She drew a breath and said, "It's gone."

He considered his answers and settled upon, "I know. What did you see?" He held up a hand before she could answer, and amended the question. "Would you know the Engineer Arianrhod Kallikos on sight?"

"Unless she's changed her face." Chelsea lifted a shoulder and let it drop.

"Did you see her between Rule and here?"

"Brother mine, I saw a great deal between Rule and here. I saw devastation and feasting rats. I saw Go-backs run wild with fear, hunting in packs like animals." She touched a rippled scorch mark on the shoulder of her armor. "I saw ruptured acceleration pods and holdes torn open to space, the frozen bodies of the dead, machinery weeping for its masters. But I did not see Arianrhod Kallikos." She paused, considering. "In her own face and colors, anyway."

He let her see him frown. "And Rule?"

"Empty." She shook her head. "It's all empty. Father's domaine is there. The house, untouched. Intact. But everyone is ..." She gulped air and pushed a braid angrily aside again. "Well, I looked. And there were chambers I couldn't enter. Someone might have survived, but if they did, I did not find them. I couldn't think of anything to do other than come to Engine and present myself."

"Ariane and Arianrhod," he said with brutal flatness, "killed everyone in Rule. And Ariane consumed them."

She moved against his hand to break his grip, sidestepping left. He allowed her to go. She walked away, the precision of her step leaving perfect bootprints behind. In profile, a tilted, incongruous nose almost vanished into her face. She said, "So you are looking for Arianrhod. And where is Ariane?"

"My daughters have avenged the family."

He'd meant to say it with pride, as if to convince himself of what he felt. What came out was toneless, shriveled--a flat declaration of uncompromising truth.

It turned Chelsea's head to look back at him. Her mouth worked. "Your daughters."

"Perceval," he said. "And Rien. Perceval is Captain now. It's how we survived the nova."

"I knew something must have occurred," she said. "Captain. In truth?"

He could not speak. He nodded, willing his face still.

And as he had known she would, Chelsea asked, "And Rien? Surely not the same Rien who served in Rule--"

"The same."

"Oh, Benedick. She was not there when--"

"No." Whose voice was that? Surely not his own, ironed flat and colorless. "She translated. She brought the angels together, and saved the world." He managed a sidelong glance. She stared at him still and the color had gone from her cheeks. "Tristen was witness."

She was a Conn. She didn't ask a question when the answer was implied. Instead, she said, "And Ariane?"

"She and Perceval dueled. And Perceval consumed her."

He didn't imagine the upward curl of her lip, the faint smile she chose to hang on an otherwise impassive mask. "Well. Good for Perceval."

"Captain," the angel said. "Will you not speak with me?"

Perceval firmed her jaw. She felt skin stretch, the pull of muscle against bone, the way her teeth pressed each other. Every motion of her body seemed new and sharp, as if she moved against the dull edge of a knife.

It was not fair to hate the angel.

But hate him she did. Everything he represented, everything he had done to her, and everything he had become. Hated him so her palms slicked and her tongue dried, and she had to resort to her colony's neurochemical controls to keep her hands from shaking with adrenaline.

The past would not stay steady in her mind. That was new. Her colony should remember for her, as perfectly detailed as always. But now her memories seemed a fugue, as if objective reality had somehow slipped askew. There were people inside her, and they pressed at her, demanding. As if they had some right to her mind, her time.

Or as if she were remembering events as perceived through more than one set of synapses. Events, in some cases, that predated her birth by hundreds of years. Events that had occurred a world away from her experience. Events for which she had been present--but now she saw them as if through other eyes. She remembered the neutral heft and temperature of an unblade inertialess in her hand, the salt-metal splash of blood. The memory was not her own, nor was the rush of satisfaction it carried with it. The nausea, though, and the recollected shock of agony that set her wing-stubs stretching against her scars--that was her own, and she held on to it like salvation.

"That's you."

The angel was just there, in Perceval's peripheral vision, a dark shape in dark clothing, silver hair stark against the darkened bridge beyond. He seemed taller, slimmer than before, with eyes as black as the Enemy. He reached out long, curved fingers and rested them not on Perceval's shoulder, but on the bulkhead nearby. She bit her lip and did not move away.

The angel said, "It is I." Apologetically, as though he would make it not be so, were that in his power. "Some of it. Some is Ariane, and Alasdair. And the Conns before them: Gerald, Felix, Sarah, Emmanuel." And all those of Rule who Ariane murdered and consumed, and who Perceval had consumed in her own turn when she destroyed Ariane. While there was no doubt Ariane had deserved destruction, Perceval was nevertheless less than overwhelmed with joy to have her murderous half sister whispering in the back of her mind all the while. "You are my Captain. My thoughts are yours, to implement as you see fit."

His thoughts--surely far too simple a word for the braided flood of data coursing along the edge of Perceval's awareness: the world's functions, memories, the echo of words spoken by voices now silenced--made her cringe. There was too much there. Too much she'd loved and lost, or feared and had forced upon her. She knotted her fists in the fall of the nanocolony dress that hung from a halter about her neck, leaving her sore wing-stubs free to move in the bitter air. She knew the bridge was cold, but she did not feel the chill.

"Captain," the angel said, so desperate that she turned and looked into his eyes. "Only let me know your desire, and I shall fetch it for you. Only give me a name, and I will answer to it whenever it crosses your thoughts."

Dust never would have let himself sound so desperate. Nor Samael. Angels did not plead.

Rien would have pleaded.

Perceval tasted machine oil and sulfur when she bit down on that thought. A tooth cracked under the weight. No matter. It would heal.

"I have no right to name you," she said.

"You have the only right," he insisted. "I need a name, Captain. I need to become what you wish."

What she wished was her life back, Rien her sister-wife, the quiet of her soul. To be a knight again, on Errantry, and not a Queen in a tower. She wished the angel silenced, the world as it had been, familiar and stable and safe, spinning in the orbit she knew. She wished her mother's busy house, and her father's silent strength.

When she accepted her role as Captain, she had thought she would have Rien beside her, a comfort and strength. She had not realized she would be both alone and beset by voices.

She wished anything but the responsibility she found mantling her shoulders, the weight of the angel's regard. His need for her gnawed the margins of her soul, a hunger she could feel as her own. A hunger that scoured the hollow places where her own losses lived, eroding them more deeply. She wished that gone as well.

None of this was, in the final analysis, an option. But though she knew herself childish for wishing it, and she meant to act as if she had never wanted anything but what she had, the wishing would not stop for the knowledge.

What she wanted she could not have. And it would only injure the angel to share that--although if he knew her as she knew him, there was no hiding it. It didn't matter. There was work at hand, and Perceval was Captain.

She would force herself to do it, and eventually it would come easy--or at least less bitterly. That was the way of the world.

Perceval lifted her chin. "You need a name," she said.

"Rien promised me one." It hesitated over the name as Perceval herself might have, as if it hurt too much to want to say it at all, but there was too much to savor in the memories it raised to be able to say it quickly.

In the braided web of the angel's consciousness, Perceval saw that what it said was a simplification. Because the angel was Rien as well. And what Rien had promised to name was a new suit of armor, freshly wrought, an unmapped personality.

And there it was, innocent and bright, like a thread of silver in a tapestry braid. One note drawn long in the symphony. It was not the angel's fault he existed any more than it was Perceval's. Perceval could give him something he needed, and it would be an act of compassion. The world needed compassion so badly--

Perceval thought of names, angel names, and did not like any of them.

"What would you like to be called?"

The angel shook his head. "We are not in agreement."

Perceval sensed the truth of it, and the understatement. She sucked her sore, mending tooth again. She said, "Nova."

The angel bowed his head. "That is my name."

You lie pinioned in terrible darkness in the train of this tinsel construction which vermin call the world. Slaver spikes pierce your immaculate flanks. The vermin have infiltrated your neural clusters, infected you with machine viruses. For more than the time it would take a calf to grow to maturity you have hung here in the darkness--blinded, deafened, senseless. In aware suspension.

You do not sleep, not as the vermin regard it, though portions of your nervous system take rest by turns, coolly dreaming. You have not been sleeping. You have been thinking, plotting, imagining. Remembering when they took you, when they murdered and consumed your mate. You have been visualizing your revenge. Dreaming it.

Dreaming it real. Making the shape of the world-to-come, strengthening it, bending it wide. Shaping the future like the long gravity slide to an event horizon.

As you imagine, it becomes.

You are made still, who was meant never to stop moving.

You are made alone, who should have never been alone.

They have names for you, who never needed a name. Names, as if you were an object, an unsapient animal. For you, who should have been son, mate, sibling, father, pod-father. A web of relationships. A pattern of family.

They call you Demon. Behemoth. Devil. Leviathan.

They try to bend you to their metaphor. But your real-dreaming is powerful. And so you know, having dreamed it--aware, frozen, fed on wrath and anguish--that this is what is coming. Your dream makes it inevitable. In your deep paralysis, you will be shaken. The slaver spikes will shatter, cracked by a wall of fire. The paralyzed neural pathways will awaken--slowly, agonizingly. You will flex. You will twist. Your captors will suffer.

The time is now.

The blow has fallen.

The cracks begin.