Dust

26 the devil of the stair

Dust said, "The child is nothing. Ariane is coming, and with her, Asrafil. Accept me."

His captain of desire stood on the empty bridge, cloaked in her shadowbright wings, and ran her hands away from her heart on either side, stroking down the rail. The sound-absorbing carpet crumbled to powder under Perceval's feet, and only by standing very still could she stop the puffs of dust that rose at every step. Cobwebs clung to her fingers as she lifted them from the rail. Cobwebs, thick with dust, drifted from the rail where her touch had broken them free, and draped across the deck like veils. "This is your heart," she said.

"And it is bitter," he answered. She didn't laugh, just flicked her eyes at him curiously, turning her shaven head.

He could see the structure of her neck and skull in the visible light, and it was beautiful to him.

"I give you my heart," he said.

He walked his avatar into the center of the room—not vast, not by the standards of Dust, who contained multitudes—and turned in the light, his arms spread wide. The wind of his moving stirred dust and spiderwebs; the entire bridge was draped in their spinnings. Dust stroked a ragged web, his fingers parsing powdery softness where his other senses reported protein chains, crystalline patterns joined by amorphous linkages.

Perceval lifted her chin. The light from the bridge's single still-brilliant lamp cast shadows stark across her face. "I do not want your heart."

"Yes, you do," he said, because he could make her want it. "Don't lie to me, Perceval. It's demeaning."

She would not look at him. "Open the panels," she said. "Show me the suns."

He stood below her and looked up. Of course, while he was below, he was above and to each side as well, but sometimes when dealing with nondistributed intelligences, it helped to focus down and mimic their thought. He wondered if she knew she'd just given him a command, and what passed for his heart leaped.

He opened the panels, and let the light of the waystars in. They hung there, at the bottom of their gravity well, hearthfire and furnace and inferno.

"We never named them," Perceval said. "Just the way-stars. A and B."

"They were never meant to be permanent," Dust said. "Naming would have been a covenant."

"They could have called it Wheelbroke." Perceval smoothed her hands along the rail again. This time there were no webs to stick to her fingers. "It wouldn't be the first time."

Dust imagined the delight he felt at her wit was the sort of thing that would make a human lover burst into fond laughter, so he tried. But she only looked at him strangely, and folded herself tight in her wings, seeming to forget they were his wings as well.

"If you love something mortal," he said, "it will only destroy you. How much better to love the world—"

She shook her head, long throat working, and stared out at the suns. Dust could have told her everything she cared to know about them; his inward perceptions might be erratic and fragile, but the external ones were maintained and precise. He'd fought that war with his brothers centuries before, and they had divided up the spoils.

His captain of desire said, "Everything's mortal, angel. Even you."

"More mortal every minute," he said. With a thought, he dimmed the panels and brought up the screens. "In defying me, you know you are also killing Rien. And everyone else within my holdes and hallways."

Her jaw worked. She looked down, but it did not matter. Wherever she turned her eyes, he could project his images, even to the inside of her head if she covered her face with her hands.

He didn't have to go that far, though. Because once she saw what he had to show her, she was wide-eyed and avid. Because he had not lied; Ariane was coming, arrayed in her powered armor for battle, shields chattering and

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sparking around her and her unblade black upon her hip. She climbed, or the armor climbed for her, from Rule and through the Enemy.

The waystars cast their light upon her. Her magnetic boots and gauntlets locked her to the skin of the world.

She was not alone. Asrafil walked beside her, in all his edgy frailty, his collar raised as if against the chill he could not feel. With a relentless determination, a strength beyond hope or despair, together they climbed the world.

Dust briefly admired their cleverness. Even if he could wrest a weapon from Asrafil's control, he could not shoot at Ariane. Not without risking his own metal skin. And even if he blocked her at the air lock, Ariane in her armor could tear her way inside.

"Open the gate," he murmured. "Throw down the bridge. Or it will go ill in the end for those within."

Perceval's hands tightened on the railing, paling across the knuckles, a blue flush visible between. The metal creaked under her grasp.

"She'll come to us," Dust said. "And if you do not join me, we will die at her, or her angel's, hand."

"You're the devil of the stairs," Perceval said. "And if I begin climbing at your word, Jacob Dust, I will never climb to the end."

That devil smiled: a slight man, unassuming, his hands knotted in the pockets of his beautiful coat. "Would that be so terrible? It's a purpose, after all. To climb and climb in pursuit of the stars. To climb in pursuit of God."

"It's a terrible purpose," she said, but he noticed that her fingers curled open atop the rail.

There was something to be said for the word of the Chief Engineer. Caitlin spoke, or sent a message, and mysteriously things got accomplished. The warrant for Arianrhod's detention was an example. Caitlin summoned a functionary, the thing was sworn out and thumbprinted, and then it was sent to be set before a judge.

Likewise, once Tristen was found, they reclaimed him in short order. Caitlin insisted on coming with them in the flesh, so he might see her with his own eyes, now that the corneas were healed. That accomplished, Benedick went with his brother to find clothing, and the women were left in a waiting room.

And so Rien found herself alone with Caitlin Conn. And because she could, she sat against the wall and watched the Chief Engineer stare at her hands and pick at her thumbnails, vanishing the way Means learned to vanish.

Or so she thought.

But Caitlin glanced up, and caught her staring, and with a hesitant smile got up and came across the floor to settle beside Rien. "We'll get her back," she said, and put a hand not on Rien's knee, but beside it.

Rien thought she was speaking to comfort herself as much as to comfort Rien, and found that, in itself, strangely ... well, comforting. Someone else was worried for Perceval. Someone else was invested in bringing her home.

Perceval had people. Which was something for Rien to envy.

She looked over at Caitlin, who was staring at her knees, and blurted entirely the wrong thing. She knew it was the wrong thing when she said it, and the words hung in front of her mouth, so bright she could almost see them, shimmering beyond recall. "Your picture is nailed facing the wall in Rule."

Caitlin looked up, licked her lips, glanced down, and finally met Rien's eyes square. "How many such portraits are there?"

"Three."

"Then yes, one of them is mine."

"And the other two?" Rien knew she was pushing her luck. But Caitlin seemed inclined to let her, just watching her face alertly, her eyebrows pushing toward a furrow in the center. Self-consciously, Rien smoothed her palms over her denuded scalp. It felt odd, the skin slightly sticky. Tristen had looked the oddest, like a boiled egg, even his milk-white eyelashes missing.

"Cynric," Caitlin said, after a long pause. "And Caithness. My sisters." She looked around for an escape, or failing that a pot of coffee. "Dead," she said, when her eyes were no longer on Rien.

"How?"

"Does it matter?"

"I don't know," Rien answered. "You tell me. They don't teach us history in Rule."

"Especially not the history of the Conn family." Caitlin

stood, and began to pace. She had a jerky, bobbing stride,

like a bantam hen—direct and purposeful. "We tried to

get rid of Dad," she said. "Do you need to know why?"

"Unless it's pertinent, I can probably extrapolate." Rien got it out with enough deadpan élan that Caitlin glanced at her twice to confirm it was meant to be funny.

Then she grinned, folded her arms, and settled back against the wall. "Thank God your mother didn't have the raising of you."

"Or my father?"

"I didn't say that." Caitlin shrugged. "Your father and I have a lot of history between us."

"And a lot of bad blood."

"And some good blood." She paused again, and this time Rien was smart enough to shut up and let her search out the words at her own place. "A lot of family blood." Her mouth did a complicated thing, and she said, "He executed Cynric."

"Benedick?"

"Beheaded her. On our father's orders."

Rien looked at her fingers, blue around the nails. She looked at the way the light fell on Caitlin's hair and through her eyes, the shadows on her skin the same color. So Caitlin slept with her sister's killer. Who was also her brother.

For political expedience?

For love?

Rien tried to imagine why she would give herself to anyone who hurt Perceval, but she couldn't get past the image of Perceval in chains, the coils of blood groping across her back in denial. Rien swallowed, and realized she had been doing it so much her throat hurt. Thinking of Arianrhod, and contracts, she said, "Did he do everything your father ordered?"

"No." Caitlin came back and sat beside her again, shoulder to shoulder. "I'm alive. And so, after a fashion, is Cynric."

Rien considered that from several angles, before deciding that when you had no information, the only stupid question was the one you didn't ask. "What do you mean?"

From the corner of her eye, Rien could see Caitlin's half-smile. "My father ate Caithness," she said. "And would have eaten Cynric, too, but some of her was already gone when he got there. I don't know if he noticed."

"Because Benedick rescued it?"

"Because Benedick looked the other way when we hid it in a common household appliance," Caitlin said. "But like a broken angel, you can't fit a whole human being in a machine that small."

"But you can fit all of Hero Ng in a peach? That doesn't make sense."

The Chief Engineer's smile, now that she turned it toward Rien, was sad. "Do you think you have all of Hero Ng in there?"

Rien shook her head, a tiny vibration, and asked him. How would I know? he answered. As far as he was concerned, this was all of him there was.

"So feeding the fruit to the resurrectees?"

Caitlin spread her hands: not helplessness, resignation. "At least they will be more useful zombies." She cleared her throat. "Maybe, who knows, maybe they'll grow to fill the space. You know, about Arianrhod—"

"Please don't make me defend why I distrust her," Rien said, eyes trained on the floor until the pressure of Caitlin's gaze made her raise them. "She may have named me for herself, but she also named me nothing."

Caitlin reached out again, and still didn't quite manage to touch her. She coughed and said, "Rien. Would you be my child?"

Somehow, Rien's hand had pressed to her throat, and she could feel her own heart beating against her fingertips. "I don't understand."

And Caitlin actually blanched, sharp white under her freckles, and then flushed pale blue. "I mean I'd adopt you."

"I would be honored," Rien said, the words—again— flown before she thought them through. So after an awkward hesitation, she had to say, "I'm Benedick's daughter. So is Perceval."

"She's coming home."

Caitlin's flat certainty stopped Rien cold. She twisted her fingers together and leaned her forearms on her thighs.

"1 hope so," said Rien.

"Come on," Caitlin said. "We need to fetch the men, and find that layabout angel, and get moving. The world isn't saving itself, you know."

Perceval had nothing to do except watch Ariane climb, so she watched, and wondered for how long she could remain resolute. Dust wore at her, his arguments and his veiled threats, the distasteful, trickling fire in her veins. He whispered in her ear, promises of fidelity and partnership that she believed, with all her heart.

She knew he made her believe them, but it wore at her nonetheless, as did the seductive whisper of the parasite wings.

"Be my disciple," he said. "And you may own me. Let me serve you, beloved, and I will give you everything. We are the world. We are the Jacob's Ladder. Between us, we can Heaven attain—"

She had no weapons. She had no allies. She touched her hip and found it naked of any defense. The bridge was draped in cobwebs until it seemed as if all the furniture had been sheeted for storage. She stood quite still and listened, and watched her enemy climb.

Ariane, assisted by her angel and her armor, picked nimbly across the webs and ladders of the world. On Dust's screens, Perceval could see a great deal—more than she ever had before. Not everything, though. Engine was closed to her, and so were many reaches of the world. Dust explained that these regions were dead, or under the domination of Asrafil or Samael or one of the lesser brothers—although there were few enough small angels and elementals left.

Perceval thought of Gavin, and held her peace. But she wondered who then the basilisk had belonged to—and who, by extension, Mallory.

Could Rien find an ally there?

Anything was possible. Pinion simpered in her ear, as it did now constantly, a low manipulative whisper. She would not hear its words. She would choose not to understand them.

"She's coming for me," she said.

Dust stroked her shoulder, down to the stump of her wing, the place where Pinion bonded her flesh. She leaned into his touch like a cat, reflexively, then recalled herself and jerked away.

She could have watched the waystars for hours, so she did, without shifting the portion of her attention that followed Ariane. The suns' embrace had grown deadly, and with Dust's senses—her senses, now, through Pinion's intercession—she could see quite plainly how dire things went with the primary. It was on the thin edge of conflagration, and there was no way for Perceval to guess what might press it over the edge.

—You could save us— Pinion murmured, and she would have blocked the frequencies of its voice, if it would have allowed.

She warmed to it; its voice was a pleasure. No, she thought. She would not accept that thinking of Dust or Pinion made her feel a melting, protective softness. She stared at the waystars and forced herself to think of Rien.

Rien, whom she had decided to love, of her own free will. Rien, whom she loved for a thousand reasons, all of them good. Rien, whom she chose.

Rien, who must not be dead, or Dust would not be at such pains to pry her from Perceval's fingers.

But thinking of Rien brought problems. Because Perceval had the means to rescue her. Or at least the means to try.

All it would cost her—

—was her integrity. Her freedom.

Rien.

She wanted to trust Dust.

She did trust him. He was there, and she knew him as if she had known him for years. As if she had trusted him for years.

Like her closest friend.

She trailed a hand down the railing as she descended into the cockpit. The bridge was not a vast room, not by the standards of the Jacob's Ladder. It was merely a comfortable size for six or eight to work in, to converse across. She stepped down the ramp, feeling stiff resistance and then a dry crunch as carpet fibers crushed under each step.

She stopped at the bottom, beside the captain's chair, which commanded the center of the bridge. She brushed cobwebs from its arms. Despite the dust, it looked comfortable.

She didn't think that was her own opinion.

"Get out of my head."

"We'll be together," Dust said, coalescing. He turned, arms wide on a grand gesture, his waistcoat catching the light of the waystars. On the screens, Ariane and Asrafil still climbed. Higher, or more inward, proceeding through the vast laddery webwork of the world. Closer now. Nearly there.

"It's the only way."

They would arrive in a matter of minutes.

"I don't love you," Perceval said. "I decide who I love, and how I love them."

"But I love you," Dust said, his breath against her scalp a thrill that made her wish she could still hide behind her hair. It wasn't real breath. It wasn't any more real than the flush that crept along her neck in response.

She stepped away from his outstretched hand. He frowned, as if he had expected her to allow him to bow over it like some make-believe prince. "I love Rien."

"But bow to me," he said, "and I will serve you all my days. Together we will cross space and sail the stars. Just your consent—"

"I don't love you," Perceval said. "I love Rien." "Because you have decided to love Rien." "Yes," she said, against the warm pressure of desire. She should have felt hunger; she did not know how long it had been since she had eaten. Her symbiont could have told her, but she did not trust its answers. It was infected by Pinion now. As surely as Perceval herself.

She scratched at the back of the chair. The cobwebs felt powdery soft; they stuck only to themselves now. And a bit to the back of her hand, but only because she tore through them.

"Get out of my head." She closed her eyes. She brushed the bit of web away with a thumb.

But even inside her head, she could see Ariane creeping like a crippled spider along the skin of the world. There was a whole world out there. Beyond her. Behind her.

Somewhere out there, beyond Dust, beyond Ariane, was Rien and Tristen and Perceval's mother and her father. Somewhere out there was a cave of bats and a necromancer guarding the vale of the dead. Somewhere there were ship-fish, flitting through gravityless corridors. There were daggery angels and lies as soft as sleep.

Perceval hated how it was made, the world. She hated what it was made for. She wished she could find the builders, and pass with them a pointy word or two. They were evil men, whatever they did in God's name.

Whatever they had thought was God's will, the world was full of people and creatures who did not deserve to die for the sins of their fathers. Perceval opened her eyes. She looked straight at Dust, at his silver waistcoat gleaming peach in the light of the dying stars, and let her hands fall.

Creatures that do not deserve to die for the sins of their fathers. And maybe, she thought, a few that do.

There was a world, and it did not matter if Perceval agreed with its plan. The world was bigger than she was. And had as much right to survive. And if she didn't like the way the world worked, tomorrow was another day.

She turned to Dust, who stood at her shoulder, shorter than she by half a head. "Take off the compulsion," she said.

"Beloved—"

"Take off the compulsion, and I shall fight for you. Give me the freedom of my heart, Jacob Dust, and I shall do your will."

"I would have given you absolution," he said. "I would have absorbed your crimes."

"Give me back my brain," she said. "Get your parasites off me, and I will be your damned captain, Jacob Dust."

"Pinion stays," he said. "There is no way now to extricate you, and you will need its protection to fight Ariane, who is armored and comes bearing an unblade."

Perceval's skin crawled, but she nodded. "Fine," she said. "As long as both of you get the hell out."

"A compromise, then. It shall be as you wish," he said. And kissed her on the cheek before she could close her eyes.

Perceval pulled away. She smiled bitterly, and looked down at her hands. The sticky bit of spiderweb smirched, her knuckle and thumb. She put her hand in her mouth, but it only tasted of grit and powder.

"Hurry, Dust," she said. "Your enemy is climbing."