She had no time to react.
Her parasite wings flared wide; they spun her. The sensation was as a child swung around in a strong man's grip, and Perceval was as powerless to hold her ground as that child. One wing cupped Rien, drew her close, and with that Perceval could assist. She caught her sister in her arms and clutched her inside the curve of her body, her nose buried in Rien's greasy dark hair. Rien screamed, or started to scream, and they were slung around again. Perceval felt the vibration of Rien's cry through her rib cage, and could think only how it must hurt to shout like that, with vacuum-stressed lungs.
Perceval wanted to close her eyes. But were she willing to admit cowardice, she barely had the time.
There were four in the corridor: a crossfire, two at each end. They wore coveralls, black with bright patterns in ultraviolet, which made Perceval think they were Exalt.
Without asking questions, without a word, they fired, and continued to fire. And air darts sailed all around Perceval and Rien, slivers of drugged or deadly plastic that were no threat to the world's fragile hull. No one would risk an explosive weapon inside. Mean or Exalt, everyone feared the Enemy more than anything save fire.
The darts made little sound when they struck the parasite wings—no melodramatic clang or thud. Just a patter like the drip of condensation from a conduit. They did not pass through. And wherever the darts flew toward Perceval or Rien, there in advance were the wings.
And then they were moving, again, not flying—the corridor was too narrow and too low—but the jerk at Perceval's shoulders was like flying. The wings—she felt them, felt them spider along the bulkheads and decking, felt the pinion-tips bend, tension between them holding her feet from the floor, felt the strain along their struts. It felt nothing like flesh and membrane and bone.
There were four wings, then, six, nine. The darts sounded like a hard rain. All Perceval could do was cling to Rien, whose forearms were locked over her own, legs trailing, and press her mouth into Rien's hair.
They came among the defenders. One dived aside; Perceval's retina photographed her, arms reaching, weapon thrown aside.
The other one, the wings went through.
If Perceval had a hand free, she would have covered Rien's eyes. They might be of an age, but she could not help but think of her sister as a child, in need of protection. Rien's fingers dug into Perceval's wrist, and there was blood, blue and bright, darkening in atmosphere, the sharp stink of it. Rien sobbed.
The defender was meat, and they were through.
The patter of darts against the parasite wings stopped abruptly when they turned the corner. They passed through lock doors, into abandoned portions of the world where the air was stale and chill radiated from the bulkheads, and it was no longer any effort for her wings to hold her feet from the floor. No gravity and no light: she saw in infrared, and by the faint chill radiance of the greeny-blue fungus that grew in the welded seams of the walls.
No pursuit followed; they were away. Perceval felt the last blood sliding as if frictionless from the wings that weren't hers. It flicked free, shivering globes that struck the corridor walls and stuck, food for that fungus. The wings folded together again, encapsulating Perceval and Rien in a warmer chrysalis.
"Who was that?" Rien said, finally, her voice thready but admirably calm.
Perceval wondered if it was a pretense.
"I don't know anything about them," she admitted.
"Oh." After a silence, though Rien cleared her throat and continued. "I do."
"What?"
Rien was shaking, and her fingers bruised Perceval's flesh against her bones, but Perceval wasn't going to say anything. She waited until Rien organized herself enough to say, "They're on a war footing, don't you think? Expecting invasion."
"Yes," Perceval said. "I think so. I think it's not just Rule and Engine that are fighting. And I know something else."
"You know where we are?"
Perceval nodded. Rien would feel her face move against her hair. "We're a really long way from home."
One of Dust's relics of remembrance was the fond old ideal of gallantry. In watching Perceval and Rien, he recollected it.
He was too much a gentleman to insinuate himself into the awareness of Perceval's wings when they wrapped her and her sister so tightly. They seemed to be functioning as intended.
It was enough.
He held the maidens in his attention for a moment, then released them. Left them huddled in his gift, and turned away.
He could not be distracted by his darling girls when he must be about seducing villains. Something might show, some hint, or texture. Some glimpse, and it would never do for Perceval and Rien to be unsafe, even for a moment.
Dust's guest would be with him shortly. And beyond the girls' safety, Dust couldn't afford to let his rival guess from whence the blow would fall.
Chimes announced a visitor. Not Dust's bells, however. Samael, damn him, selected his own clarion. He chose to be piped aboard like an admiral. Was it any wonder Dust found him unbearable?
The chime was only a courtesy. Samael began to resolve in Dust's chamber almost instantaneously: not a full manifestation, but still something more concrete than a hologram. Real politeness would have waited for an invitation, but Samael was arrogant.
Dust flattered himself that he could have prevented the entrance. But perhaps it was better to appear less than one was, to keep something in reserve—
That he had lost his last argument with Samael did not mean that he would lose them all. Surely not. Still, politeness was a virtue.
With a half-breathed sigh, he resolved a tendril into a concrete state, meeting Samael halfway.
Samael's avatar was cleaning his nails when Dust stepped out of air beside him. It was an ostentatious nail-cleaning, involving a facsimile of a pearl-handled pocketknife, and the parings that fell to Dust's deck spread hairy roots and grew into some creepery vine heavy with fragrant, waxen flowers.
Dust ground it under his polished black boot. "This is not the place nor the time to stake claims."
However mildly he spoke, wherever Samael seemed to be looking, Dust knew his sibling's attention focused on him—at least as far as the current interaction went. He folded his black-sleeved arms over the silver brocade of his vest, aware that it glittered in the light like mail or scales, and let his stare rest on Samael.
Dust's sibling affected a pale and ascetic aspect, long white-blond hair trailing in locks around a narrow basset-hound face. He frowned, and it made him look soft-eyed, but Dust knew it for artifice as surely as the band-collared shirt worn with blue jeans and bare feet and an emerald brocade tailcoat with velvet lapels.
Self-consciously, Samael folded the knife away, and then picked lint from his shoulder. He did not flick that to the floor, but tucked it in his pocket. Which was something, Dust supposed.
He thought Samael would counter with some comment on Dust's lack of sibling hospitality, but Samael hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans. "I want to trade," he said.
Dust stared. He brushed invisible fringes over the edges of Samael's avatar, but for all Samael's reaction the caress— or test—might have been a breath of wind. "Trade?"
"I'm the Angel of Death, aren't I?" The knobby hands turned palm-up now. "And you're the Angel of Memory. So trade me a little knowledge for a little life. A little withholding of death, if you will."
"Don't be ridiculous," Dust said. "You're not the angel of anything."
"That's what they call us. And not just us. Some of them call the old crew angels and demons, too."
"Ahh," Dust said, willing his fingers to stillness when they wanted to worry his sleeves, "but we know better, don't we? Besides, if you were the angel of anything, it would be the angel of... life-support services." He scraped his boot across the deck, leaving a green smear of chlorophyll like a punctuation mark.