Dust

13 the deck

Dust is the answer—dust:

dust everywhere.

— CONRAD AlKEN,

The House of Dust

This time, Dust was expecting his brother. The anchore was hung with pennants, and everywhere flocked gorgeously gowned servants with hollow, scooped-out backs, so when they turned away you could see them from the inside, like the mold in which a person had been cast. They carried salvers and censers, platters and candelabra, everything as exquisite and enchanted as the servitors—and just as hollow. It was pageant, stage play.

A masque, because that was how the story went.

In the midst of all the exhibition sat Dust, or more precisely Dust's avatar, a Puritan magpie in his black frock coat and pewter weskit, his sealed pocket watch ticking in his gray-gloved hand. The chair he lounged upon was ebony, or the dream of ebony. He was a spot of glossy darkness surrounded by vacuous finery.

The symbolism pleased him.

He had been waiting only a fraction of a second—long enough, quite long enough, for an angel—when Samael materialized from a gyre of smoke and a shower of glitter. Still barefoot, affecting torn jeans and with his scarred chest shirtless, he glowered at Dust over crossed arms.

"What snaps an unblade?" he asked.

"I beg your pardon," Dust answered. "I am afraid I don't follow. A little context please?"

"What snaps an unblade? We've seen one snapped, haven't we? In the hand of the man in the passage that isn't supposed to be there. The passage no one remembers."

"Rien remembered it. Will you stay for dinner, Samael?"

Slowly, Samael's arms uncrossed, as he no doubt considered whether he would get anything from Dust without playing along, and decided he wouldn't. "Stage your puppet show then," he said with ill grace, and stalked past Dust to the table. A chair materialized to take him; he seated himself, and scooted in.

As for Dust, he stood, spun his own chair, and reseated himself at Samael's right hand. Elbows on the table, he leaned forward, peering around the wall of Samael's hair. "Surely you have time for entertainments," Dust said. With a gesture, he ringed the table with more chairs, each of them uniquely archaic, one red-cushioned with a tasseled rope knotted across the arms.

Around them, hollow-backed waiters swayed and served and dipped and poured, a feast of roasted peacock and braised beef, with salats and subtleties and a dozen varieties of wine that vanished into smoke from the glass when the next was served.

Samael tasted none of it.

"What's the name of that unblade?" he asked.

Dust amused himself with knife and fork, a self-conscious burlesque of a dining man. He answered without raising his chin. "Charity."

He was prepared for the dead silence that answered him. But he couldn't quite prevent a smirk from curling the corners of his mouth upward. Really, he mused, chasing green peas up the back slope of his fork with the edge of the butter knife, all a smirk was, was what a smile turned into when you fought with it.

"Tristen," Samael breathed—not an actual word, but a burst of processor activity so strong that Dust could read the resulting ionization disturbance in the air between them. And then he pushed his untouched plate away and said, "You sent them that way."

The peacock was succulent, bestowing a puddle of pinkish juice upon the plate in response to the pressure of Dust's fork; as well it should have been, as it was conjured from his memory of a thousand elaborate dinners, real and fictional. He sliced and tasted and sipped red wine. It was exactly like duck: nowhere in his memory was the taste of peacock recorded.

"Don't worry," he said, to patent disapproval. "No peacocks were harmed in the making of this dinner. And how could I have misdirected our gallant maidens, when your agents guided them? Agents whose introduction to the game I protested."

"Who else would have remembered a forgotten passageway?"

"Rien remembered," Dust said, again. "Now, what about the unblade?"

"I asked what snapped it." Samael shrugged. "And you are not going to tell me."

"Because I don't know." Dust set his fork aside. With a wave of his hand, the plates vanished, the whole groaning table left stark and empty, without so much as a cloth to cover it. "Fine," he said. "Have it your way. I can't tell you what an unblade shatters on. But I can tell you where it comes from, in the moving times."

"So can anyone. They're what became of the autodocs, but now, they can only maim. Sever things that can't be healed, not even by symbionts or surgery. You've infested the whole ship with your medieval madness."

Dust smiled. "Not mine. Conn's. The Captain's word is Law." Samael was staring at him with open speculation, and he realized he might have said too much. A subject change was in order. "Shall I lay out the cards?"

Samael did not stop staring. "It's not just fiction and history, is it, Jacob?"

Dust made a flourish in the air, his lace cuff falling across his glove. Between his fingers appeared a glossy oblong, a steel case embossed with a black enamel dragon. He cracked it open with a thumb and flipped the cards into his hand.

They were longer than a standard deck, though not much wider. The backs were plain black, the edges finished in silver gilt. They clicked like baccarat tiles when he shuffled them. "Choose a card," he said.

"Silence is as good as an answer, angel."

"No," Dust said, a token on the table to show willing. "It's not just fiction and history in my memory."

"It's people, too."

"Choose a card," Dust said.

Because they sat side by side, inasmuch as either of them were their physical bodies, Dust fanned the cards facing away. The black backs, glazed-glossy, would have shown the smudge of skin soil, if they had ever been touched by a naked human hand.

Irritably, Samael tapped one on the edge. "Pull it out," Dust instructed, and with ill grace his brother did. "Rome burns," Samael said. "And you fiddle with card tricks."

"Is Rome burning?" Dust's voice could not have rung falser, or more innocent.

Samael grunted and laid the card face up.

"Silence is as good as an answer, angel. Ah, the inverted Suns. The card in the first position represents the environment in which the query takes place, and the most pressing question." Dust fanned his cards wider. "Choose another."

This time, Samael didn't bother with argument. He drew out the next card; Dust caught his wrist and guided him in placing it. It showed a man suspended upside-down in a cryo chamber, his wrists and ankles crossed. "The Hanged Man," Dust said. "Life in suspension. That which does not progress. But also, a time of rebirth, of hard-won knowledge. This is the card that crosses, the thing that opposes. Choose a card."

Samael did, and let Dust show him where to place it. His wrist felt cold and rigid; his avatar had no more depth of seeming than the hollow-backed servants. "The Captain of Stars. There are six suits and six face cards in each, plus ten numbered ones. He is the root of the matter, the crux upon which the conflict rests. He is a man, or was one; a fiery and ambitious person, prone to quick action. His choices led inevitably to the situation we have now."

"And that situation is?"

"The inverted Suns crossed by the Hanged Man," Dust said, touching those. "Tarot readings are like stories, you see—they have characters, conflict, action, climax, theme, and denouement."

"What are the six suits?"

"Of course," Dust said. "You wouldn't remember. Memory is a spiderweb. It hangs in a corner and collects dust. Until you need it to catch a fly. The six suits are Cups, Stars, Stones, Blades, Wires, and Voids."

"Voids? Plural?"

"I know," Dust said, with a sigh of irritation. "But it wasn't me that named them. Choose a card."

They went around the central cross clockwise from that third card at the bottom: left, top, right. The Angel of Wires, the Nine of Stones, the Prince of Stars. Dust touched the leftmost card with his free hand.

"Metatron is dead," Samael said. But now, Dust noticed, he leaned forward, the front of his scarred shoulder pressed to Dust's left arm. He brushed the edge of the card, which showed a stylized, jewel-colored stained-glass-style image of an androgynous figure whose wings and arms were bound close with cutting-thin, multicolored strands. They were not barbed wire, but Dust persisted in thinking of them so.

Sometimes, even he found his program overly Gothic.

"And so the Angel of Wires resides in the Past," Dust said. "If the Angel of Wires is Metatron."

"Who else?"

"You," Dust said. "Camael. Uriel, perhaps?"

"Not Asrafil?"

"Blades," Dust said, in a clipped tone. "Or nothing." He touched the edge of the topmost card of the pattern. It was a woman, serene before an air lock twisted all over with grapevines and sunflowers. A branch of pomegranates hung heavy over her shoulder, and a white raptor sat hooded on her fist. "The Nine of Stones, in the Sky. Under what influences the situation shall play out. It is the card of Apollonian mastery of the Dionysian. But not denial; the falcon is jessed and hooded, but he is not caged. He stands on her glove, ready in an instant to fly."

Samael touched the Prince of Stars. A black-haired man, narrow-faced, with a tight goatee, stood with entwined burning suns over his shoulder. He leaned upon a harrow. Vines broke from the earth at his feet and twined him in fruit and flowers. "And what is this?"

"Who."

"Who is this?"

Dust smiled. "Who do you think? Stars are the suit of fire, of course, of growth and nurturing. And also things that burn well-nigh eternally, that burn even iron in the end. He is the prince of the forge, that one. You know, on Earth, the cards had only four suits and each suit has only four face cards. But there are six important directions here in space."

"Brother, you're stalling."

"Brother," Dust said. "Choose another card."

And when Samael had, and under Dust's guidance had laid it down to the right side of the cross and surround, they saw it was an image of a winged being, haloed and nude, who held a flaming orb between his opposed palms. The Angel of Stars. "Ah," Dust said. "The querent. That would be you."

"So the Angel of Wires is Metatron?"

"It looks more likely. Choose a card."

Above the Angel of Suns was laid the Princess of Blades. "Perceval," Samael said, with satisfaction.

Dust caught himself smirking again. How hard could it be, to let the smile just happen? "The House. That which surrounds and influences the querent. Blades are the suit of atmosphere and habitation, the suit of change when the change is willed. Choose a—"

"—card." Samael's hand was already moving. He slipped a card free and turned it over. With a glance at Dust to confirm the action, he laid it above the previous card. Another winged figure, but this one's wings faded without visible border from inky-feathered indigo into a blackness that covered the background of the card. In their depths, stars shimmered.

"The Angel of Voids," Samael said, without looking at Dust.

"This is the card of what opposes the querent," Dust said, and made himself expressionless.

Samael shifted in his chair. "We could be partners, Dust."

"We're not?"

Dust smiled, and Samael smiled back at him, shaking his head. "Don't make me bring Asrafil into this."

Dust tilted the plaques in his hand. "Choose a card for the Outcome."

"One more?"

"Maybe."

Samael chose, and turned it over in the appropriate place, at the top of the straight line. "The Princess of Voids," Dust said. "Voids are the suit of entropy, of memory, of shadows."

"Nothing will come of nothing," Samael said. "Speak again."

"You got that on my kiss," Dust said. "But I suppose now you think you always knew Shakespeare."

"So Rien is the Outcome."

"Part of it." Dust shuffled the remaining plaques, cut them, and turned one over. The ten of blades. "Ruin," he said, "but that doesn't concern us." He turned another, covering the first. The three of blades. "Heartbreak," he said. "But also not our problem. One more chance—"

He turned a third, and did not lay it down upon the others. Instead, he weighed it in his hand a moment, and then placed it adjoining the last card, tilted at an angle, as if it sprouted from the feet of the Princess of Voids.

Upon it was printed "a stylized image of a bulbous, streamlined silver starship, nothing like the bulky and tangled outline of the Jacob's Ladder. It was wreathed in improbable flames, and tiny people had been blown screaming from the hole in the side.

"The Tower," Dust said. "It represents change, over-throw, destruction of the old order. The crumbling of all you have worked for. Wrack, and riot. Downfall and over-f turn."

"We fail?" Samael asked after a quiet moment.

"Flowers grow from corpses," Dust said, and swept the cards together. "Are you sure you would not like a glass of wine?"

"No," Samael said. He pushed his chair away, the moment broken. "I am not distracted, Jacob. You sent them to find Tristen Conn."

Dust cased his cards, careful with the silk handkerchief that enfolded them inside the enamel box. "He's not in the reading," he said. "Neither is Ariane. And yet their brother and nieces are. I wonder what that means."

"You don't know?"

"I am," Dust said primly, standing to bid his brother farewell, "the Angel of Memory, Samael. Not the Angel of Foresight."

The ugly lines of Samael's houndlike face rearranged themselves. He would never be handsome, but he was beautiful when he smiled. "And yet, you believe in prophecy?"

"No," Dust said, tucking his cards into a weskit-pocket. "I believe in stacking the deck."