Dust

22 inward and down

And a voice spoke out of the tall grass, and bade Rien to come forward, and not to fear.

The first was the easier. She glanced over her shoulder, to where Tristen and her father stood as if petrified. Benedick noticed her glance, though, and nodded once, so Rien wondered why he thought she required his approval. And then wondered why she had turned to look for it.

"Gavin?"

"Do as you are bid," he whispered, but he did not leave her shoulder. So Rien stepped forward, because after years of living in Rule, while fear could impel her to follow orders, it could no longer paralyze her.

A few steps, and her eyes began to water with a scent she had been too angry before to notice. It was the scent of hot water, rich in metal and minerals, and she followed it in. Now she heard footsteps behind her, Benedick and Tristen trailed at a respectful distance, and she was struck between gratitude for the company and a trickle of wrath, that they did not think her competent enough to handle whatever lay ahead.

Whatever lay, she now saw, at the bottom of a crevasse. The deck was torn and furrowed before her, the air so sultry that beads of lukewarm water condensed upon her skin. She saw the curled edges of metal, eroded and friable; the wheat stalks nodding over the cavernous hole. Rien's symbiont ticked away; the water was hot, radioactive. Not into the redline, though; her colony still believed it could handle the dose, and Hero Ng was inclined to support it.

Given how he died, Rien thought she should respect his judgment.

"Climb down," spoke the voice—deep, many-threaded, with holing overtones echoing up from the cavern. "Rien Conn, climb down."

Rien steeled herself and called back, "Sir, I am afraid to. You are very hot, and would burn me."

"Know ye not that the spirit of God like a fire is burning? In immolation are ye freed."

"This may be so," said Gavin, from her shoulder, "but the lady has work to do before anyone 'frees' her. Come up, if you please."

That provoked a chuckle, and an answer. "Then I shall come up. And perhaps scald you less. Small ones, shield your eyes."

Rien obeyed, her symbiont darkening her vision- She could not see if Tristen and Benedick followed suit, but she hoped so. Because what rose from the corroded rent in the decking was a muscular pillar of blue-white luminescent heat, a flare near worthy of the waystars. The thing twined like a snake, its tiger's head wreathed in lashing ribbons, its clawed hands flexing. Steam rolled like a fog bank from its hide, which was striped like a tiger's, incandescent blue on blinding white.

Rien's radiation detector clicked so fast she heard nothing else for a moment, her skin already aching. And then the rate of impacts dropped, the clicks tailed off, the flare of brilliance dimmed to the sulky colors of embers. "Rien Conn," it said. "Your sister has been taken by Dust, and you must run if you are to save her."

She should have guessed who was behind the abduction, had she not been so filthy with anger. "I don't know where to run."

The thing writhed atop an endless body, or perhaps a column of coherent water. Rien could not tell. "Run to Engine. I am their ally of old."

Whatever this creature was, Hero Ng did not know it. \ Rien herself had no idea. Gavin clucked in her ear.

"Susabo," he said. "I was told you were dead, angel."

The tiger-thing smiled with its glowing maw. "I am not Susabo. No, for he was struck through the heart with stone by the Enemy, and then his brothers devoured what remained. I am Inkling. I am he that was born where the blood from Susabo's death wound spilled."

"A core leak," Rien gasped. "You're a reactor core coolant leak." The one that killed Hero Ng, she guessed. But Ng remained silent when she asked.

Graciously, the tiger-thing inclined his head and spread his arms wide for a bow. "I am Inkling. Do you know what you fight, little nothing?"

"Dust? Only what Samael told us." She imagined Benedick wincing behind her for the information she gave away. But if this thing wanted them dead, she imagined they would have no way to stop it. Already the skin of her face and hands felt taut and dry; even to be in Inkling's presence was blistering.

"He was the library," Inkling said. "He has a head full of romantic nonsense and divine intervention. He does not know what I know."

A leading statement if ever there was one, and Rien gestured him to continue.

"That the only God is in the numbers and fire; in the equations and the furnace. That is the God who can save us. That is what the Engineers knew, and the commanders did not know, for their eyes were watching their frail and tiny God. And now the relict of their belief that they were the chosen ones, their belief in their own election, holds your sister to the fire. Do not believe in angels, Rien Conn, for they are all corrupted by the lies of the Builders, as your forebears were corrupted, too. Only the blood of Engine is clean of deceit."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Because I will show you a faster path to Engine. And because 1 am a friend of Caitlin Conn, who sent me to you. Now I bid you again" —a slow rolling of steam from enormous jaws, such that Gavin bated on Rien's shoulder, and she put a hand up to gentle him before he started something she couldn't finish— "climb down."

Rien bit her lip. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, half expecting the flesh to slide away at the touch. Even with the symbionts, could they endure this monster's lair? There was a story, wasn't there, of a lion that pretended injury and friendship to other animals, until one day a fox noticed that all the tracks to his cave led in?

But surely, if he meant to deceive, he could have met them in a fairer form.

"One thing," Benedick asked. His voice came so close at Rien's elbow that she almost jumped into the demon's arms. "Did Cat send a message for me?"

The demon regarded him with smug pleasure. "In point of fact, Lord Benedick, she did not." Its tongue moved like a cat's. "She did for Lord Tristen, however, with your indulgence."

"Speak it, then." Tristen, too, had somehow come up on Rien in her complete ignorance. His hand brushed her elbow; she leaned on him in gratitude.

The tiger-demon chuckled. "She bids you welcome, and bids you trust me. And bids you also remember the time in your childhood when you 'borrowed' her paints, and made such a mess in the hall that your father had you both beaten—you for mischief, and she for carelessness."

"I'm half satisfied," Tristen said. "Although an agent of Ariane's could know that."

"Climb down," Benedick answered. "He's from Cat." "How do you know?" Rien was surprised to hear her own voice sound so strong. It was, of course, an illusion. "Cat hasn't spoken to me in fifteen years," he said. "A little thing like the end of the world wouldn't change that."

Perceval's shivering was only partly from the cold, but Pinion folded about her nonetheless, as if its warmth could help. She might, under other circumstances, have struck out, beaten the parasite wings away. But she would not let Dust see her weak, and she would not let Dust see her frightened.

Angry, disgusted: there was dignity in those, and she let that be her lodestar. "But then why bring so many living?" she asked. "Why the heavens and passengers and all the animals above? Why whole, frozen people? If all the Builders cared for was the genetic material—"

"There's a lot of good on a carcass," Dust said. And then he winked, as if he had been seeing if Perceval would recoil.

She would not give him the satisfaction. "Why so many live passengers, Dust?"

"Jacob."

She bit her lip. He shrugged, and turned away.

"Jacob," she said. Telling herself that it cost her nothing, really. A name was only a name. "Please. If you want my cooperation, explain why you should have it."

An uplifted hand beckoned, and she came to him. Pinion seemed content to let her walk as she pleased for now, although its touch made her flesh creep. "The Builders named me for a reason," he said. "I am the ladder the angels must climb to achieve Heaven."

"Samael said the world was a program to force evolution."

"Samael talks too much."

If Perceval said that of Rien—well, first it would be a lie, but moreover, she would have said it with love in her voice. Falling from Dust's lips, it came with the cold of the Enemy's empty breath.

For a moment, Perceval saw him clearly, his gray eyes level, his extended hand. She saw him unclouded by chemical trust, the cold shock of adrenaline clearing her mind. She stared hard, fixed the image, recorded it. Recorded as well the emotion of the moment, and fixed that, too. Some part of her symbiont was still her own; it responded as it should.

Or perhaps all of it was still hers, loyal, and struggling as hard against Pinion's assault as was Perceval. "How do you force evolution?"

"If you wanted your grandchildren to grow up angels?" He brushed his fingers down Pinion's edge, and Perceval felt it.

She stepped back.

Dust gestured around, at the holde and all its macabre contents. "What would you not stop at?" he asked. "Would you send them out to the stars on a mission of no return, either to grow wings or to die trying?"

"The builders wanted to make up gods?"

"I am their memory," Dust said. "They had all the time in the world. All the tools in the world. As you have seen, they were adequately ruthless in engendering mutation. What their own tools would not do, the ionizing radiation would. And making you over in God's image was the only thing they cared for. But this is not mine, this mausoleum of ice."

"Whose, then?"

"I told you," he said. "These dead belong to Samael."

It was a slither and a skid down into the crater, and Rien tried not to think what it was doing to her hands—or what the radiation was doing inside her. She was Exalt now, she reminded herself. One of the monsters.

From what Samael had told them, more monstrous than anyone had known.

She would live. And if her flesh blistered and sloughed, what of it? She would think of Perceval, pulled into the cold, and the fire would seem to have no heat.

Behind her, Benedick was down, and Tristen was coming. Gavin, who had waited above, drifted beside him. If he had any concern that the bubbling pool concealed in the crevasse was hot in more than temperature, he did not show it, but rather circled and circled again through the veils from the smoking water. There was no sign of Inkling. The tiger-thing had fallen back into the water as if it had never been.

Rien glanced back at Tristen and Benedick. The men's legs were longer. And Gavin had wings. "Ready?" she called, as Tristen half hopped, half slid to the top of the path.

It might have been stupid, but Rien needed to make the gesture. She turned her back on her father and started running.

At first she could call it easy. The way sloped down, alongside the steaming river. A ripple of blue-silver light flowed along it, against the current, and Rien was fit and frustrated. If Benedick called after her, she did not hear him.

She followed the light. Briefly, it crossed her mind that she could have learned from immediate experience and waited. Might as well try to bridle the wind; she was fed up, as Head would have remarked, and too full of fed up to sit down for any more of it.

She ran. And footsteps followed on hard behind her.

"I suppose you know where you're going?" Tristen said, running in step a yard behind. He must have passed Benedick.

"You sound like somebody's dad."

"You never know. Someday you might find out I am."

Rien laughed, and felt a traitor for laughing. She could hold on to her anger and determination—they charged every stride—but her misery was no match for the rhythm of her feet. Instead, a black determination rose in her, as if she could feel the wrath coiling her arteries.

She could welcome that.

Tristen did not speak again, but rather let her run.

Her shoes thumped on the path unevenly, for the way was not smooth. She was obliged to leap and scramble, following the deadly water through many levels of the ship. Something was funny with the gravity; she ran down, but beside her the river was flowing up. She imagined if she leapt into it, before it cooked her flesh shredding from bone, she would feel herself carried down, down, back to the beginning.

However uneven, her steps were a rhythm for meditation. On her left side rose torn metal, stained and savage, weeping rust. Under her feet the smashed bulkheads had been smoothed by many feet, doing as hers did now.

She twisted through a narrow pass, spiked plates of buckled decking, and slithered from the overhang down to a broad landing below. Rust stained her clothing, tattooed abraded skin. She'd be as hot as Inkling when they came to Engine. Maybe they would give her a gold-lined coffin, cast in lead. They might pour colorless diamonds and topazes through her fingers, so her radiant touch could stain them green and blue, the colors of the abandoned homeworld.

The colors seething in this fatal river.

She stepped aside, dropped her hands on her knees, and gasped. Benedick landed lightly beside her, folding into a crouch from which he rose on what seemed the same efficient motion. There was a good watery light by which to see the chamber—blue undulations rippled up the walls as if reflected from the river, but in this case the river was the source.

Her lungs burned, though her muscles still felt strong. Bile and bitterness painted the back of her throat; her stomach heaved. The skin on the back of her hands was rising in lenticulate bubbles. The air was thin, and growing thinner; she could not fill herself on it no matter how much she sucked in and heaved Out. "How long before we're blinded?" she asked her father, wondering if she could sense the first milky cataract already growing.

"The dose is no more than four sieverts," Benedick said. "Your symbiont will protect you."

"For now," Rien said.

"When it doesn't," Benedick answered, "I shall."

Gavin swung wide over the water, the crawling light reflecting on the underside of his wings until he shone like a blue jewel. Tristen slithered down beside them, and as he straightened, wheezed, "Run on."

But Rien was retching. Hands still on her knees, caustic ropes of mucus and bile slipping between her teeth. The blisters on her palms broke. Her hands slipped on their own outer layer of skin, well lubricated with dripping lymph.

When Tristen took her elbow, she felt the wetness of his flesh weeping, too. "Run on," he said. "For Perceval."

Rien spat one more mouthful of vomit and made herself rise. "Gavin," she called out. "Lead us!"

His only answer was to sideslip, turning, and glide toward shore. Then over the bulwark at the edge of their brief landing, and on.

They followed him down on blistering feet. Tristen was the next to suffer the nausea, turning his head to vomit as he ran. Running downhill jarred feet, ankles, hips, knees. The gravity varied from level to level, sometimes from step to step. They staggered. Rien's skin sloughed where the margins of her clothing rubbed it.

She vomited, and vomited again. Her hair fell loose in her hands when she wiped it from her forehead. The decking creaked and settled beneath her feet, rusted metal flaking, ragged edges crumbling when they passed too close.

After another hour, Benedick went to one knee. He fended her back with an outstretched hand when she would have gone to him, vomited and vomited until the froth that dripped from his lip was cobalt with blood.

He stood, doubled, fists clenched in his belly. Standing, he vomited again. Rien would have sworn there was nothing left to bring up, but he found something.

Spatters of his own blue blood.

Rien wobbled, dizzy. She retched in sympathy, her abdominal muscles contracting as if around a swung fist. She held her hand out to her father, again, and this time he took it and let her pull him on.

In the fourth hour, she thought, if you had told the Rien of a fortnight past that she would do what she was doing for the love of an inviolate princess, she would have laughed in your face. In the fifth hour, while her joints ached and the swelling in her hands made it impossible for her to tip a water bottle between them, never mind fumbling off the top, she thought, this is what Perceval has given me. In the sixth hour, she thought only of pain, of nausea, of keeping Gavin and Benedick in sight before and Tristen in earshot behind.

In the seventh hour, she did not think. She followed on in suffering and purgation, a raw red weeping thing that only ran until it stumbled, and then ran on again.

And on Gavin led them, on and down through hell.