"He should have been released," Caitlin said. "I'll see to it. Continue. Once you have him back, what then?"
"We're going after Perceval," Rien said.
"With Samael."
"I don't see a way around it." Benedick put his hand on Rien's shoulder, and she allowed him to take up the thread of conversation again. "We'll need an angel. And we need to choose an angel to support, if Rien—"
"Hero Ng," Rien corrected, and then blushed blue as she realized what she'd just done.
"Hero Ng," Caitlin echoed, "is correct that we'll need a unified A.I. to hold the world together."
"He is confident in his assessment. And he knows where Perceval is. Or he is nearly certain," Rien said, the phrasing not her own.
Caitlin seemed to know it. She smiled bitterly and stood, bouncing on her toes, radiating vibrant energy. She came around the desk. She wasn't much taller than Rien, but her arms and neck showed evidence of muscle. A black-hilted unblade bumped at her hip.
"I should stay here," she said. "And direct the preparations."
"And watch over Arianrhod."
She bit her lip. "I can have Arianrhod detained. And questioned. If you two are willing to stand surety."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning if she proves innocent, you could be sued for false accusation." Caitlin's hand rested, Rien thought unconsciously, on the unblade's hilt. Her thumb caressed the pommel. She turned over her shoulder and glanced at the blanked-out screens. "I wish we still had Susabo," she said. "That was a no-nonsense sort of angel. I'd back him over Samael."
"Was it Samael who killed him?"
"It was the stone that killed him. Or weakened him. But yes, it was Samael who ate what was left. And I couldn't defend him. So now we have Inkling, who is fierce, but small. As angels go. And we have Samael."
"And Rule has Dust?"
Caitlin shook her head, arms folded, head cocked to one side consideringly. "Rule has Asrafil. The Angel of Battle Systems. Or maybe Asrafil has Rule, and Samael has us."
"And Dust has Perceval," Benedick said, and Caitlin nodded.
"Yes," she said. "Come on. If we're going to choose, we need to be about choosing."
"I thought you were staying here," Benedick said.
Rien drew a breath. She hoped not. She wanted Caitlin to leap to the defense of her daughter.
"Making the ship ready for flight is a vital undertaking," Caitlin said, and Rien's heart fell, as it had fallen when she looked at Arianrhod and saw something about as genuine as the gift of sugar cookies. And then Caitlin uncrossed her arms, letting them swing from the shoulders, and continued, "So is retaking the command center. And there are a lot of Engineers here."
"Cat?" Benedick asked.
She looked up at him, not quite a glare but also not forgiveness, and said, "Let's go decant our brother."
26 the devil of the stair
There were no more faces and the
stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's
mouth drivelling, beyond repair.
Dust said, "The child is nothing. Ariane is coming, and with her, Asrafil. Accept me."
His captain of desire stood on the empty bridge, cloaked in her shadowbright wings, and ran her hands away from her heart on either side, stroking down the rail. The sound-absorbing carpet crumbled to powder under Perceval's feet, and only by standing very still could she stop the puffs of dust that rose at every step. Cobwebs clung to her fingers as she lifted them from the rail. Cobwebs, thick with dust, drifted from the rail where her touch had broken them free, and draped across the deck like veils. "This is your heart," she said.
"And it is bitter," he answered. She didn't laugh, just flicked her eyes at him curiously, turning her shaven head.
He could see the structure of her neck and skull in the visible light, and it was beautiful to him.
"I give you my heart," he said.
He walked his avatar into the center of the room—not vast, not by the standards of Dust, who contained multitudes—and turned in the light, his arms spread wide. The wind of his moving stirred dust and spiderwebs; the entire bridge was draped in their spinnings. Dust stroked a ragged web, his fingers parsing powdery softness where his other senses reported protein chains, crystalline patterns joined by amorphous linkages.
Perceval lifted her chin. The light from the bridge's single still-brilliant lamp cast shadows stark across her face. "I do not want your heart."
"Yes, you do," he said, because he could make her want it. "Don't lie to me, Perceval. It's demeaning."
She would not look at him. "Open the panels," she said. "Show me the suns."
He stood below her and looked up. Of course, while he was below, he was above and to each side as well, but sometimes when dealing with nondistributed intelligences, it helped to focus down and mimic their thought. He wondered if she knew she'd just given him a command, and what passed for his heart leaped.
He opened the panels, and let the light of the waystars in. They hung there, at the bottom of their gravity well, hearthfire and furnace and inferno.
"We never named them," Perceval said. "Just the way-stars. A and B."
"They were never meant to be permanent," Dust said. "Naming would have been a covenant."
"They could have called it Wheelbroke." Perceval smoothed her hands along the rail again. This time there were no webs to stick to her fingers. "It wouldn't be the first time."
Dust imagined the delight he felt at her wit was the sort of thing that would make a human lover burst into fond laughter, so he tried. But she only looked at him strangely, and folded herself tight in her wings, seeming to forget they were his wings as well.
"If you love something mortal," he said, "it will only destroy you. How much better to love the world—"
She shook her head, long throat working, and stared out at the suns. Dust could have told her everything she cared to know about them; his inward perceptions might be erratic and fragile, but the external ones were maintained and precise. He'd fought that war with his brothers centuries before, and they had divided up the spoils.
His captain of desire said, "Everything's mortal, angel. Even you."
"More mortal every minute," he said. With a thought, he dimmed the panels and brought up the screens. "In defying me, you know you are also killing Rien. And everyone else within my holdes and hallways."
Her jaw worked. She looked down, but it did not matter. Wherever she turned her eyes, he could project his images, even to the inside of her head if she covered her face with her hands.
He didn't have to go that far, though. Because once she saw what he had to show her, she was wide-eyed and avid. Because he had not lied; Ariane was coming, arrayed in her powered armor for battle, shields chattering and
289
sparking around her and her unblade black upon her hip. She climbed, or the armor climbed for her, from Rule and through the Enemy.
The waystars cast their light upon her. Her magnetic boots and gauntlets locked her to the skin of the world.
She was not alone. Asrafil walked beside her, in all his edgy frailty, his collar raised as if against the chill he could not feel. With a relentless determination, a strength beyond hope or despair, together they climbed the world.