Samael's holde was a Heaven, as besuited the Angel of Life Support Services. And he was waiting when Dust arrived, already coalesced, arms crossed, wearing his green velvet coat and vast ragged raven wings.
For a picosecond, Dust considered the rudeness of re fusing to take shape. He could hover over Samael, pluck at his limp blond locks, tweak the lace at his sleeves. He could make his displeasure known. It would be satisfying.
But it would gain him nothing.
With a sigh, he settled on a shape, and formed. Not a human shape and not the angel-shape Samael mocked, however.
Dust made of himself a dragon.
His wings would span the holde, if he unfolded them. His barbed and rebarbed head bent low on a black-mailed neck. He wore horns like an oryx and barbels like a catfish, and his breast was scaled in silver.
He massed no more than a pony, but there was something to be said for psychological warfare.
"A whole holde," Dust said. "All that Heaven, and only for your creature."
"My creature?" Samael craned his neck back to see him, but showed no fear. A shape was only a mask, to be discarded upon an instant. Dust could well imagine Samael reciting that truth to himself.
"Mallory," Dust hissed. "And the familiar basilisk. You sent my maidens to them."
"My maidens? The world's maidens, surely. Do you begrudge them a little assistance, a little education?"
"That is no Ben Kenobi. More une belle quelquesome-thing sans merci."
"The question stands, my dearest Dust." When Samael uncrossed his arms, it was to stand hipshot, balanced on the toes of one bare foot and the heel of the other. He had simulated transparent silver toenail polish.
Dust might have said that Samael lied, but in truth he had not, really. He had omitted, but by the most strict definition that was not providing false information. And that was what the ancient lingering protocols forbade them. The builders must never have imagined that the world might find itself not only fragmented, but wishing to lie between modules.
"Yes," he said, because he had to say it. "I begrudge your assistance. And I begrudge Mallory."
"Tough," Samael said. He stepped forward, bounced up on his toes, and planted a kiss on Dust's scaly cheek. "I know you want to be the last angel standing. But brother, so do I."
Even if Rien awoke sore and sticky, it was a better awakening than the last. The wood was quiet. No birds sang, and the shade under the trees had deepened. A shadow panel must have crossed the suns, and the sudden cool twilight had awakened her.
She reached out casually behind and found, not Perceval—whose lap she recalled falling asleep in—but the warm wooden neck of Mallory's guitar.
Rien had never played such an instrument before. Her learning had been done on student pieces, plastic guitars suitable for a Mean. But this was real wood, not manufactured. It had a completely different tone.
She was grateful in her bones to have been allowed to play it. And more grateful still that Mallory had seen fit to leave it by her while she slept. That hinted at offered trust, which Rien was in no position to turn away from.
But what she wanted was Perceval.
Carefully, Rien rolled onto her back. The ground was soft, but her hip hurt from sleeping on it. And the muscles of arms and legs, belly and back and neck, ached more. Something bound her sore left arm. She wondered how many days she'd lain ill. Perceval had recovered incredibly fast.
But Perceval was Exalt.
As she lay dizzy, staring at the canopy and waiting for it to stop whirling and breathing the buttery scent of almond blossoms (when you are drunk, Rien remembered, put one foot flat on the floor, and she drew her knee up to press her sole against the blanket under her), she heard something deft and heavy beat away through the air. Gavin, she hoped, leaving to tell the others she'd awakened.
Rien's heart beat faster. She worked her dry mouth; her eyes and lips were not very crusty, though.
Maybe she had the strength to rise and find water.
Maybe she wouldn't have to.
Footsteps approached, soft and sure. They were not Perceval's, and Rien was surprised to find she knew her sister's tread already. She lifted herself on her elbows as Mallory's face hove into view, a pale oval nacreous through the gloaming.
The necromancer dropped on crossed legs beside Rien, thumping into moss and leaf litter. Skinny, agile hands disarrayed the blankets and tugged Rien's arm free; watching their impersonal touch, she discovered that her arm was bandaged. There were tubes, needles, which Mallory slid out as deftly as Doctor could have, back in Rule.
Rien almost thought, back home. But that was wrong, wasn't it? "Thank you," she said. "How long was I sick?"
Mallory's face went briefly vague, as those of Exalts could do when they consulted their internal worlds. "Seven hours."
"Oh. But I had the flu? The same flu Perceval did." Which had left her unconscious for half a day.
"Perceval was weakened," Mallory said. "You were only hungry and tired."
But Perceval is Exalt, Rien almost said, and bit her tongue just in time. She could already imagine the dexterity with which Mallory's arched dark eyebrows would rise, and the answer that didn't need saying.
The funny thing was, the trees rustled when Mallory hesitated, though there was no breeze. Odd; the holde seemed large enough for convection currents, and the temperature drop should provoke circulation. But then, it was a strange wood, carefully managed, quiet and open and full of light. Rien dusted a fallen peach-petal off her cheek. Many of the trees, she thought, were ancient, their age-weakened branches supported by posts and strapping. "This is one of the old Heavens."
"The first," Mallory agreed, unless it was a correction. Needles and tubes and whatever they had been connected to vanished into the ubiquitous pack, which rested beside the guitar for the time being. "Do you like the trees?"
"They're beautiful. You care for them?"
"There's only me," Mallory answered. Which made Rien wonder about Gavin. But perhaps as a colony construct, he didn't count as company by Mallory's standards. "They're a library."
"A library?" Rien tilted her chin up again, gazing at the whispering branches. "An archive, you mean? A library of trees?"
"A library of trees." Mallory looked up as well. "But we've lost the index. Here—"
The necromancer stood and stepped away, feet indenting the loam. It was a tiptoe reach to bring down an apricot, soft and fuzzy and not much bigger than Mallory's thumb. When Rien put out her hand and Mallory laid it there, the brush of fingertips against the hollow of her palm made her stomach drop.
Eyes on Mallory's, Rien put the still-warm, velour-skinned fruit in her mouth and sucked the flesh from the stone. It was sweet, sharp with overripeness, yet bland and a little gritty, not as juicy as she had thought it might be. She spat the stone into her palm, chewed the pulp, and swallowed.
A whirl of music, a human voice, a shivering crescendo of drums and electric guitar. Rien sat transfixed by the music, old and alien and like nothing she'd heard before. She felt her symbiont accepting the new information, integrating it. Making it part of her flesh and her bone. It immersed and surrounded her, but even as she heard it performed, she sensed it as a gestalt, knew the notes and the chords. She could have played it, if her hands were sufficiently trained to the task. She could have sung it, if her voice were adequate. She could have rearranged it, resurrected it, reinvented it, if she had been a composer.
A song, and she'd swallowed it.
She found her way back, eventually. Her eyes stung with the beauty. A warm hand rested on Rien's nape. It was comforting, and it sent a shiver down between her shoulders. She swallowed and licked salt from her lip and tried to think what to say.