And maybe not be crushed. As long as they caught the leading edge. As long as they accelerated fast enough to stay with it. As long as they could reinforce the world, and locate enough acceleration tanks that the augmented crew stood a chance of survival. "There's no hope for the Mean," Ng said. "They will have to be Exalted immediately; there's no point in maintaining controls only to see them perish."
It was possible, as long as the world did not tear itself apart at the seams from the strain. The whole ship would have to accelerate evenly. The whole ship would have to stay ahead of the line of debris. Or they would be reduced to a smudge along the edge of the newly forming planetary nebula.
"And then what?" Arianrhod said, the first words Rien had heard her speak since fainting on the stretcher. "We fly blindly into darkness until we freeze? That seems to be a jump from the fire into the icebox, if I may stretch a metaphor."
Rien felt her lips stretch around Ng's smile. It was a nice smile, she judged, if a little smug. "If we live that long? When we're up to speed, we deploy a ramscoop. We find a better star, one that looks to have habitable worlds. And we steer for it."
"Simple," Arianrhod said, unfolding her arms. She glanced over her shoulder at the auburn-haired, snub' nosed woman who had been at her side now both times Rien had seen her. "Chief Engineer?"
She didn't mean Ng.
Which meant that was Caitlin Conn. Perceval's mother. Who was looking at Rien with far more concentration than was Arianrhod, though perhaps that was self-protection or embarrassment on Arianrhod's part.
"I think it could work," Caitlin said, without shifting her gaze. Maybe she was looking at—assessing—Hero Ng. He was the one wearing Rien's face, just now. "If it doesn't kill us. Of course, sitting here waiting for the boom will kill us, too. There's just one problem ..."
Rien found control of her own voice, or Ng relinquished it to her. She stepped away from Samael and, incidentally, Benedick. Gavin fanned his wings on her shoulder, for balance, and she remembered that he was Samael's creature.
And so was Mallory.
Which meant, so was Ng.
There was no one to trust. Except Perceval. Because if she didn't trust Perceval, there was nothing worth fighting for.
"What's the problem?" Benedick asked.
Rien knew the answer. "We'd have to unify the world's A.I. to do it. The angels don't work together without a guiding intelligence."
She would not look at Samael.
She couldn't bear to watch him preening.
At least, she thought, he wouldn't consume Hero Ng, and all his fellows from the moving times. No: they could be rehomed in the resurrected. Whose persons had been devoured by other Exalt, in the present day.
It all comes around again, Hero Ng whispered. Be of good heart and good patience, brave Rien.
25 Vault
Yes, I have a thousand tongues,
And nine and ninety-nine lie.
A little later, Rien sat alone except for Gavin, feeling small and lost behind a table in the corner. She watched the adults, whom she was still tempted to call the Exalt, performing their mysterious dances of conversation, moving from place to place around the big room like ants touching antennae and sharing pheromones, passing news of the death of an old queen or the ascension of the new. She had slipped away from Samael—or at least, from Samael's avatar—and Benedick was talking to someone she didn't know while ignoring Caitlin and being ignored right back.
Like two cats on a bed, she thought. She fiddled with her fingers and thought about what she knew through Hero Ng.
His plan might even work.
Samael, Mallory, and Gavin. She told herself she'd only been using Mallory, that she had never trusted or liked Gavin. The basilisk still roosted on her shoulder, baleful eyes tight shut. She poked him with a finger. "Wake up."
"Do I look plugged in to you? I'm not sleeping."
"Good," she said. "Because I'm sending you home."
"Rien—"
But she stopped him with a raised hand. A funny awkward gesture when one made it to someone whose head bobbed beside one's own. "Someone needs to fetch Mallory and the fruits of the library tree. And you are the obvious choice. Can you find your way EVA?"
"I can." He billed her cheek. She ordered herself not to be charmed and turned her face away. "You think I serve Samael," he said.
"Don't you?"
He shrugged, both wings. "Do you?"
"No." As flatly as she could say it. "I don't see the point in angels. Or in reuniting angels. Or in choosing one angel over another; it's like asking if you would rather be scourged or boiled in oil. They're all full of shit and self-importance."
She must have spoken louder than she intended, because her words made someone—other than Gavin— laugh. She craned her neck to see over his back.
A young woman somewhat smaller and slighter than even Rien stood against the wall. She'd call her a woman, anyway, though she was covered in a soft spotted coat of gray-gold fur. Her wings—folded tight, long-boned, with grasping fingers at the joint—were what caught Rien's eye and made her breath short, though, because in seeing them, she could imagine what Perceval's wings had been like.
It came to Rien that even if she got her sister back, she would never see her whole. In breathtaking unfairness, the Perceval-who-had-been was maimed before Rien had ever met her.
She wanted to reach out and rub one hand down the velvet-furred bones of the stranger's wing, to see if it felt— as it appeared—like the velour skin of a peach. Instead, Rien made herself look at her face, and register a fine nose and wide mouth, unbalanced by heavy brows.
"Rien," she said, by way of introduction. Her hands were cold, and she chafed them on her trouser legs.
"Jordan," the stranger answered, and held out a fine-boned hand. She was as slender as Perceval. Rien wondered if they were related.
Rien took her hand, reminding herself that falling for strangers simply because they looked a little like Perceval was stupid. Although Perceval would never want her, and wouldn't holding on be stupider, still?
There was no fur on the stranger's palms, or the backs of her fingers. The skin there was black, like the skin on her face where the fur did not cover, and Rien thought of the hands of lemurs. The fur made sense; Jordan had no apparent body fat, and she was small and thin. You'd need some kind of insulation.
"You don't like Samael," Jordan said.
"I don't like being manipulated." Rien gave her hand a squeeze and released it. "I guess that means I don't like angels."
Then she held up one finger for a moment of quiet, and tapped Gavin on the wing. "Will you do what I asked you to?"
"Your wish is my command," he said, with abject dryness, and kicked off with more force than was needful.
Heads turned as he swept across the room with long, rowing strokes of his wings, tail snaking behind. A tall man ducked, though Gavin never came with a meter of him. Samael, speaking quietly with Benedick, affected either boredom or oblivion; he didn't even lift his head.
Rien wanted to hit him.
And maybe Jordan noticed her clenching hands, as the door slipped open in front of Gavin and he vanished into the corridor beyond. Because she touched Rien's wrist lightly, and when she turned, smiled. "Tell me more."