"Fuck," Rien muttered under her breath, and—to the basilisk's apparent wing-flapping chagrin—picked her way over the moldy mounds of guano to take Perceval's hand.
Perceval spoke low, her voice humming on harmonics Rien found soothing. She blinked furiously, and would have shaken her head to clear it except whoever that was off in the darkness could see her, limned by Pinion's light.
She realized that she hadn't consciously processed a single word Perceval said. And Gavin, bizarrely, was huddled against her neck like a worried parrot, compacted down to half his previously apparent size. Whether he was collapsing his form or just sleeking himself down like a bird, Rien didn't know, but the implication that she was meant to protect him concerned her.
She concentrated on her eyes and let Perceval lead her forward across the sucking mess of the floor. It was warm and humid, the reek of ammonia unrelenting. Guano dripped in her hair, warm and sticky.
So much for clean clothes.
"Who the hell puts bats on a spaceship?" she muttered, expecting it to be lost under Perceval's chanted buzz.
"Insect control," Gavin said against her ear. "Eventual terraforming. And bat guano is excellent for hydroponics and traditional agriculture." He was warm, which she wouldn't expect of a machine, and he fit just under the curve of her jaw.
And how does a hand tool that thinks it's a mythical animal know that? she almost asked, but decided against it as long as his talons pricked the hollow over her collarbone. At least he was keeping the bat shit off one shoulder.
Perceval moved forward slowly and Rien went with her. Now she saw the pale spidery shape crouched against the wall; it was hard, because he was streaked—coated— with the same filth that crusted every object. It served admirably as camouflage.
Other than a coat of guano, he was naked, and he held both hands folded before his mouth, streaked with blood up to the elbows. His hair, if it was hair, was a spiked, matted, dreadlocked mass gray with guano and stiff about his shoulders. His irises reflected Pinion's light, two flat glowing discs floating in the darkness.
He dropped the carcass of the bat, and Rien saw he had something else in his hand. Something short and flat, the part that was not enfolded in his grip about the size of Perceval's palm. "Perceval, watch—"
The wild man lunged.
Perceval might have caught him, and Pinion might have stopped him. Perceval dropped Rien's hand and stepped half in front, and the wings darted forward on either side of her—but Gavin had already sprung off Rien's shoulder, two heavy wingbeats carrying him aloft.
The guano a few steps in front of the charging man sizzled, smoked, and exploded. Rien jumped back, skidded in shit, and managed to catch her balance by windmilling her arms at the cost of a strained inner thigh.
But she was looking at Gavin, his eyes open, glaring torch-blue in the darkness with the internal radiance of his colony. There was smoke and the stench of burnt ammonia, worse than the unburned guano—like boiling piss on the stove, Rien thought, gagging, as every bat in the world shot off the roof for the passage and the air was wheeling with pin-scratching, squeaking, sight-defeating animals.
"Laser-cutting torch," she said.
The wild man had stopped. And as the bats cleared, Rien could see that he stood in the light, on the other side of the blasted patch, his right hand still upraised with what was now revealed as a broken blade clutched in it. Gavin hovered, his wingbeats stirring the air in the passage, his tail writhing behind him.
"I want to help you," Perceval said, and this time Rien heard her clearly.
The man with the broken sword put his hands on his knees and doubled over, gasping.
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."