"Who else would have remembered a forgotten passageway?"
"Rien remembered," Dust said, again. "Now, what about the unblade?"
"I asked what snapped it." Samael shrugged. "And you are not going to tell me."
"Because I don't know." Dust set his fork aside. With a wave of his hand, the plates vanished, the whole groaning table left stark and empty, without so much as a cloth to cover it. "Fine," he said. "Have it your way. I can't tell you what an unblade shatters on. But I can tell you where it comes from, in the moving times."
"So can anyone. They're what became of the autodocs, but now, they can only maim. Sever things that can't be healed, not even by symbionts or surgery. You've infested the whole ship with your medieval madness."
Dust smiled. "Not mine. Conn's. The Captain's word is Law." Samael was staring at him with open speculation, and he realized he might have said too much. A subject change was in order. "Shall I lay out the cards?"
Samael did not stop staring. "It's not just fiction and history, is it, Jacob?"
Dust made a flourish in the air, his lace cuff falling across his glove. Between his fingers appeared a glossy oblong, a steel case embossed with a black enamel dragon. He cracked it open with a thumb and flipped the cards into his hand.
They were longer than a standard deck, though not much wider. The backs were plain black, the edges finished in silver gilt. They clicked like baccarat tiles when he shuffled them. "Choose a card," he said.
"Silence is as good as an answer, angel."
"No," Dust said, a token on the table to show willing. "It's not just fiction and history in my memory."
"It's people, too."
"Choose a card," Dust said.
Because they sat side by side, inasmuch as either of them were their physical bodies, Dust fanned the cards facing away. The black backs, glazed-glossy, would have shown the smudge of skin soil, if they had ever been touched by a naked human hand.
Irritably, Samael tapped one on the edge. "Pull it out," Dust instructed, and with ill grace his brother did. "Rome burns," Samael said. "And you fiddle with card tricks."
"Is Rome burning?" Dust's voice could not have rung falser, or more innocent.
Samael grunted and laid the card face up.
"Silence is as good as an answer, angel. Ah, the inverted Suns. The card in the first position represents the environment in which the query takes place, and the most pressing question." Dust fanned his cards wider. "Choose another."
This time, Samael didn't bother with argument. He drew out the next card; Dust caught his wrist and guided him in placing it. It showed a man suspended upside-down in a cryo chamber, his wrists and ankles crossed. "The Hanged Man," Dust said. "Life in suspension. That which does not progress. But also, a time of rebirth, of hard-won knowledge. This is the card that crosses, the thing that opposes. Choose a card."
Samael did, and let Dust show him where to place it. His wrist felt cold and rigid; his avatar had no more depth of seeming than the hollow-backed servants. "The Captain of Stars. There are six suits and six face cards in each, plus ten numbered ones. He is the root of the matter, the crux upon which the conflict rests. He is a man, or was one; a fiery and ambitious person, prone to quick action. His choices led inevitably to the situation we have now."
"And that situation is?"
"The inverted Suns crossed by the Hanged Man," Dust said, touching those. "Tarot readings are like stories, you see—they have characters, conflict, action, climax, theme, and denouement."
"What are the six suits?"
"Of course," Dust said. "You wouldn't remember. Memory is a spiderweb. It hangs in a corner and collects dust. Until you need it to catch a fly. The six suits are Cups, Stars, Stones, Blades, Wires, and Voids."
"Voids? Plural?"
"I know," Dust said, with a sigh of irritation. "But it wasn't me that named them. Choose a card."
They went around the central cross clockwise from that third card at the bottom: left, top, right. The Angel of Wires, the Nine of Stones, the Prince of Stars. Dust touched the leftmost card with his free hand.
"Metatron is dead," Samael said. But now, Dust noticed, he leaned forward, the front of his scarred shoulder pressed to Dust's left arm. He brushed the edge of the card, which showed a stylized, jewel-colored stained-glass-style image of an androgynous figure whose wings and arms were bound close with cutting-thin, multicolored strands. They were not barbed wire, but Dust persisted in thinking of them so.
Sometimes, even he found his program overly Gothic.
"And so the Angel of Wires resides in the Past," Dust said. "If the Angel of Wires is Metatron."
"Who else?"
"You," Dust said. "Camael. Uriel, perhaps?"
"Not Asrafil?"
"Blades," Dust said, in a clipped tone. "Or nothing." He touched the edge of the topmost card of the pattern. It was a woman, serene before an air lock twisted all over with grapevines and sunflowers. A branch of pomegranates hung heavy over her shoulder, and a white raptor sat hooded on her fist. "The Nine of Stones, in the Sky. Under what influences the situation shall play out. It is the card of Apollonian mastery of the Dionysian. But not denial; the falcon is jessed and hooded, but he is not caged. He stands on her glove, ready in an instant to fly."
Samael touched the Prince of Stars. A black-haired man, narrow-faced, with a tight goatee, stood with entwined burning suns over his shoulder. He leaned upon a harrow. Vines broke from the earth at his feet and twined him in fruit and flowers. "And what is this?"
"Who."
"Who is this?"
Dust smiled. "Who do you think? Stars are the suit of fire, of course, of growth and nurturing. And also things that burn well-nigh eternally, that burn even iron in the end. He is the prince of the forge, that one. You know, on Earth, the cards had only four suits and each suit has only four face cards. But there are six important directions here in space."
"Brother, you're stalling."
"Brother," Dust said. "Choose another card."
And when Samael had, and under Dust's guidance had laid it down to the right side of the cross and surround, they saw it was an image of a winged being, haloed and nude, who held a flaming orb between his opposed palms. The Angel of Stars. "Ah," Dust said. "The querent. That would be you."
"So the Angel of Wires is Metatron?"
"It looks more likely. Choose a card."
Above the Angel of Suns was laid the Princess of Blades. "Perceval," Samael said, with satisfaction.
Dust caught himself smirking again. How hard could it be, to let the smile just happen? "The House. That which surrounds and influences the querent. Blades are the suit of atmosphere and habitation, the suit of change when the change is willed. Choose a—"
"—card." Samael's hand was already moving. He slipped a card free and turned it over. With a glance at Dust to confirm the action, he laid it above the previous card. Another winged figure, but this one's wings faded without visible border from inky-feathered indigo into a blackness that covered the background of the card. In their depths, stars shimmered.
"The Angel of Voids," Samael said, without looking at Dust.
"This is the card of what opposes the querent," Dust said, and made himself expressionless.
Samael shifted in his chair. "We could be partners, Dust."
"We're not?"
Dust smiled, and Samael smiled back at him, shaking his head. "Don't make me bring Asrafil into this."
Dust tilted the plaques in his hand. "Choose a card for the Outcome."
"One more?"
"Maybe."
Samael chose, and turned it over in the appropriate place, at the top of the straight line. "The Princess of Voids," Dust said. "Voids are the suit of entropy, of memory, of shadows."