She should have guessed who was behind the abduction, had she not been so filthy with anger. "I don't know where to run."
The thing writhed atop an endless body, or perhaps a column of coherent water. Rien could not tell. "Run to Engine. I am their ally of old."
Whatever this creature was, Hero Ng did not know it. \ Rien herself had no idea. Gavin clucked in her ear.
"Susabo," he said. "I was told you were dead, angel."
The tiger-thing smiled with its glowing maw. "I am not Susabo. No, for he was struck through the heart with stone by the Enemy, and then his brothers devoured what remained. I am Inkling. I am he that was born where the blood from Susabo's death wound spilled."
"A core leak," Rien gasped. "You're a reactor core coolant leak." The one that killed Hero Ng, she guessed. But Ng remained silent when she asked.
Graciously, the tiger-thing inclined his head and spread his arms wide for a bow. "I am Inkling. Do you know what you fight, little nothing?"
"Dust? Only what Samael told us." She imagined Benedick wincing behind her for the information she gave away. But if this thing wanted them dead, she imagined they would have no way to stop it. Already the skin of her face and hands felt taut and dry; even to be in Inkling's presence was blistering.
"He was the library," Inkling said. "He has a head full of romantic nonsense and divine intervention. He does not know what I know."
A leading statement if ever there was one, and Rien gestured him to continue.
"That the only God is in the numbers and fire; in the equations and the furnace. That is the God who can save us. That is what the Engineers knew, and the commanders did not know, for their eyes were watching their frail and tiny God. And now the relict of their belief that they were the chosen ones, their belief in their own election, holds your sister to the fire. Do not believe in angels, Rien Conn, for they are all corrupted by the lies of the Builders, as your forebears were corrupted, too. Only the blood of Engine is clean of deceit."
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because I will show you a faster path to Engine. And because 1 am a friend of Caitlin Conn, who sent me to you. Now I bid you again" —a slow rolling of steam from enormous jaws, such that Gavin bated on Rien's shoulder, and she put a hand up to gentle him before he started something she couldn't finish— "climb down."
Rien bit her lip. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, half expecting the flesh to slide away at the touch. Even with the symbionts, could they endure this monster's lair? There was a story, wasn't there, of a lion that pretended injury and friendship to other animals, until one day a fox noticed that all the tracks to his cave led in?
But surely, if he meant to deceive, he could have met them in a fairer form.
"One thing," Benedick asked. His voice came so close at Rien's elbow that she almost jumped into the demon's arms. "Did Cat send a message for me?"
The demon regarded him with smug pleasure. "In point of fact, Lord Benedick, she did not." Its tongue moved like a cat's. "She did for Lord Tristen, however, with your indulgence."
"Speak it, then." Tristen, too, had somehow come up on Rien in her complete ignorance. His hand brushed her elbow; she leaned on him in gratitude.
The tiger-demon chuckled. "She bids you welcome, and bids you trust me. And bids you also remember the time in your childhood when you 'borrowed' her paints, and made such a mess in the hall that your father had you both beaten—you for mischief, and she for carelessness."
"I'm half satisfied," Tristen said. "Although an agent of Ariane's could know that."
"Climb down," Benedick answered. "He's from Cat." "How do you know?" Rien was surprised to hear her own voice sound so strong. It was, of course, an illusion. "Cat hasn't spoken to me in fifteen years," he said. "A little thing like the end of the world wouldn't change that."
Perceval's shivering was only partly from the cold, but Pinion folded about her nonetheless, as if its warmth could help. She might, under other circumstances, have struck out, beaten the parasite wings away. But she would not let Dust see her weak, and she would not let Dust see her frightened.
Angry, disgusted: there was dignity in those, and she let that be her lodestar. "But then why bring so many living?" she asked. "Why the heavens and passengers and all the animals above? Why whole, frozen people? If all the Builders cared for was the genetic material—"
"There's a lot of good on a carcass," Dust said. And then he winked, as if he had been seeing if Perceval would recoil.
She would not give him the satisfaction. "Why so many live passengers, Dust?"
"Jacob."
She bit her lip. He shrugged, and turned away.
"Jacob," she said. Telling herself that it cost her nothing, really. A name was only a name. "Please. If you want my cooperation, explain why you should have it."
An uplifted hand beckoned, and she came to him. Pinion seemed content to let her walk as she pleased for now, although its touch made her flesh creep. "The Builders named me for a reason," he said. "I am the ladder the angels must climb to achieve Heaven."
"Samael said the world was a program to force evolution."
"Samael talks too much."
If Perceval said that of Rien—well, first it would be a lie, but moreover, she would have said it with love in her voice. Falling from Dust's lips, it came with the cold of the Enemy's empty breath.
For a moment, Perceval saw him clearly, his gray eyes level, his extended hand. She saw him unclouded by chemical trust, the cold shock of adrenaline clearing her mind. She stared hard, fixed the image, recorded it. Recorded as well the emotion of the moment, and fixed that, too. Some part of her symbiont was still her own; it responded as it should.
Or perhaps all of it was still hers, loyal, and struggling as hard against Pinion's assault as was Perceval. "How do you force evolution?"
"If you wanted your grandchildren to grow up angels?" He brushed his fingers down Pinion's edge, and Perceval felt it.
She stepped back.
Dust gestured around, at the holde and all its macabre contents. "What would you not stop at?" he asked. "Would you send them out to the stars on a mission of no return, either to grow wings or to die trying?"
"The builders wanted to make up gods?"
"I am their memory," Dust said. "They had all the time in the world. All the tools in the world. As you have seen, they were adequately ruthless in engendering mutation. What their own tools would not do, the ionizing radiation would. And making you over in God's image was the only thing they cared for. But this is not mine, this mausoleum of ice."
"Whose, then?"
"I told you," he said. "These dead belong to Samael."
It was a slither and a skid down into the crater, and Rien tried not to think what it was doing to her hands—or what the radiation was doing inside her. She was Exalt now, she reminded herself. One of the monsters.
From what Samael had told them, more monstrous than anyone had known.
She would live. And if her flesh blistered and sloughed, what of it? She would think of Perceval, pulled into the cold, and the fire would seem to have no heat.
Behind her, Benedick was down, and Tristen was coming. Gavin, who had waited above, drifted beside him. If he had any concern that the bubbling pool concealed in the crevasse was hot in more than temperature, he did not show it, but rather circled and circled again through the veils from the smoking water. There was no sign of Inkling. The tiger-thing had fallen back into the water as if it had never been.