What she wished was her life back, Rien her sister-wife, the quiet of her soul. To be a knight again, on Errantry, and not a Queen in a tower. She wished the angel silenced, the world as it had been, familiar and stable and safe, spinning in the orbit she knew. She wished her mother's busy house, and her father's silent strength.

When she accepted her role as Captain, she had thought she would have Rien beside her, a comfort and strength. She had not realized she would be both alone and beset by voices.

She wished anything but the responsibility she found mantling her shoulders, the weight of the angel's regard. His need for her gnawed the margins of her soul, a hunger she could feel as her own. A hunger that scoured the hollow places where her own losses lived, eroding them more deeply. She wished that gone as well.

None of this was, in the final a.n.a.lysis, an option. But though she knew herself childish for wishing it, and she meant to act as if she had never wanted anything but what she had, the wishing would not stop for the knowledge.

What she wanted she could not have. And it would only injure the angel to share that-although if he knew her as she knew him, there was no hiding it. It didn't matter. There was work at hand, and Perceval was Captain.

She would force herself to do it, and eventually it would come easy-or at least less bitterly. That was the way of the world.

Perceval lifted her chin. "You need a name," she said.

"Rien promised me one." It hesitated over the name as Perceval herself might have, as if it hurt too much to want to say it at all, but there was too much to savor in the memories it raised to be able to say it quickly.

In the braided web of the angel's consciousness, Perceval saw that what it said was a simplification. Because the angel was Rien as well. And what Rien had promised to name was a new suit of armor, freshly wrought, an unmapped personality.

And there it was, innocent and bright, like a thread of silver in a tapestry braid. One note drawn long in the symphony. It was not the angel's fault he existed any more than it was Perceval's. Perceval could give him something he needed, and it would be an act of compa.s.sion. The world needed compa.s.sion so badly- Perceval thought of names, angel names, and did not like any of them.

"What would you like to be called?"

The angel shook his head. "We are not in agreement."

Perceval sensed the truth of it, and the understatement. She sucked her sore, mending tooth again. She said, "Nova."

The angel bowed his head. "That is my name."

You lie pinioned in terrible darkness in the train of this tinsel construction which vermin call the world. Slaver spikes pierce your immaculate flanks. The vermin have infiltrated your neural cl.u.s.ters, infected you with machine viruses. For more than the time it would take a calf to grow to maturity you have hung here in the darkness-blinded, deafened, senseless. In aware suspension.

You do not sleep, not as the vermin regard it, though portions of your nervous system take rest by turns, coolly dreaming. You have not been sleeping. You have been thinking, plotting, imagining. Remembering when they took you, when they murdered and consumed your mate. You have been visualizing your revenge. Dreaming it.

Dreaming it real. Making the shape of the world-to-come, strengthening it, bending it wide. Shaping the future like the long gravity slide to an event horizon.

As you imagine, it becomes.

You are made still, who was meant never to stop moving.

You are made alone, who should have never been alone.

They have names for you, who never needed a name. Names, as if you were an object, an unsapient animal. For you, who should have been son, mate, sibling, father, pod-father. A web of relationships. A pattern of family.

They call you Demon. Behemoth. Devil. Leviathan.

They try to bend you to their metaphor. But your real-dreaming is powerful. And so you know, having dreamed it-aware, frozen, fed on wrath and anguish-that this is what is coming. Your dream makes it inevitable. In your deep paralysis, you will be shaken. The slaver spikes will shatter, cracked by a wall of fire. The paralyzed neural pathways will awaken-slowly, agonizingly. You will flex. You will twist. Your captors will suffer.

The time is now.

The blow has fallen.

The cracks begin.

6.

a gallery of portals

They hatch c.o.c.katrice's eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper

-Isaiah 59:5, King James Bible

Arianrhod had known from the first that she could lose Bened.i.c.k. But running barefoot through the springy gra.s.s of the causeway, she also knew that overconfidence would not reward her. She would be cautious. Minutes before, awake in her tank, she had bent her skills to slowing her heartbeat and respiration so Caitlin would not know she was aware and in possession of a.s.sistance. She had measured her oxygen levels and h.o.a.rded her strength. Aware, she could trigger hibernation. Aware, she could red-light the tank, and no one would question her death. It was only a short step from there to escape. Caitlin would a.s.sume that she had had help, but the fact was, Arianrhod had planned for this. She had always known her plan to support Asrafil, to become the one who held the strings and the power behind Captain Ariane, might fail.

She had not antic.i.p.ated that failure, but she had planned for it.

She must live. It was not only a matter of her own survival, but of a sacred trust. Her lord Asrafil now depended on her. She had had her own way out.

That wasn't the way it had worked out, exactly. She had not realized how many allies she had remaining. But she was adaptable, and an escape that began with her released from her tank by an outside agency merely meant the advantage of a few extra minutes of lead time, and the luxury of not having to fight and sabotage her way past Caitlin and the machines of Engine.

Now the h.o.a.rded energy was hers to spend, and perhaps she had a knife at Caitlin's throat in the long term.

Bened.i.c.k was good, but she understood him. His political and martial ac.u.men were unmatched, but Arianrhod knew how things were built. And also how to take them apart again. She was older than Bened.i.c.k, as clever and-because he thought like a Conn, not like an Engineer-she was also far more comfortable in her colony, its abilities, and their uses.

The Conns were corporeocentric as a culture, identified with their physical forms, unwilling to modify. Engineers were more comfortable with constant transition and evolution. They more perfectly expressed the will of the Builders, adaptation itself having become the end state. For was not the world a wheel, eternally in motion? So while Arianrhod had spent a great deal of time perfecting her shape-mature, attractive, carefully balanced to be enough like a Conn to be comforting while still evidently that of an Engineer-she now began to shed it.

A loss, but losses were also a mere challenge to adaptation. She could have shifted herself faster and more completely-and with less risk-in a medical tank, but pheromones and biochemistry and a few chromatic and cosmetic alterations would do for a beginning. She felt the tingle in the bones of her face, the burn and spark of lightning against her long bones as they awakened to growth long suspended.

The change would take time, and there were sacrifices she was not yet prepared to make that could reveal her. Her neural pattern must remain intact for the time being, as it was still necessary that she stay herself. Changes to her ident.i.ty would eventually become inevitable, but those would have to wait until she no longer needed the cloak of who she was.

Another loss. A necessary one. She would be prepared to make sacrifices.

Despite the discomfort-not yet pain, though it would be, which was another reason to wish for a medical tank-she ran on, covering ground lightly, leaving as little trail as conveniently possible until she came to the parting of the ways. Five possible trails. This was where she would lose Bened.i.c.k.

"Asrafil," she murmured, and felt something larger and more alien tear inside her. Her enemies might think her ambitious, ruthless, but she comforted herself with the truth: that she was given in service, and sometimes that service demanded great sacrifice. She had given up so much already. So many lives. So much material. A little merely physical agony was nothing to spare herself.

Her symbiont pinched, pulled, separated, and Arianrhod gasped in pain as half her colony peeled free of her cells to flood from her mouth, her ears, the pores of her skin. Blue tendrils groped from every orifice, glossy with off-tints in the nebula's cankerous light. The symbiont seethed forth until it wreathed the air around her like smoke threading from a burned-out motor.

It wavered in coils. Then it dissipated, as if a breeze had spread it wide.

Arianrhod, hands on her knees, pressed her spinning head lower and gasped. Saliva flooded her mouth; she gulped and it stung her raw throat going down. Releasing a portion of her colony had cost her. The result was inflammation, ruptured cells, internal bleeding. Her remaining, weakened symbiont could replenish itself-and repair her body-but the process would take time.

Pride forced her to brace her palms against her kneecaps, push herself upright, and stand tall. She tossed loose strands of hair-storm-colored now, like the images of light-torn clouds from the old world, a gradient of silver through pewter to coal-behind her shoulder, shook it out, and breathed deeply enough to feel her ribs crack. Please, she thought, pushing down firmly on an upwelling of relief.

She repeated, "Asrafil."

Like a fan, the angel unfolded beside her. Familiar, in his black coat and boots, arms crossed, stern over the almost-feminine bones of his face. He raised his arms and stretched, as if settling new flesh over new bones-although he had neither-and smiled at her.

"Well done," he said. "Well done, indeed. How may I reward your service, my brave one?"

Arianrhod stretched out her hands to him like a plaintive child. She said, "Carry me."

The angel lifted her into his arms. With a sweep of his hand, he smoothed the gra.s.s where she had stood, erasing the evidence of her distress. Then, they rose with the flaring of his coat and ascended into the air. "I know where to go," he said.

"That's as may be," Arianrhod answered, letting her head relax against his shoulder. "But first we must make a side trip. I have something to collect."

"What is it?" She felt their bodies rising and falling between the wings he constructed from stolen threads ripped from pa.s.sing colonies.

"Something my daughter Ariane concealed decades ago," Arianrhod said.

Asrafil clucked his tongue. He knew she was teasing him.

She still waited a few moments before she relented. "A weapon," she said. "It's a weapon."

Because it was easier to lead than follow, Gavin preceded his necromancer up the spiral stair to Rule, bobbing between heavy wingbeats as he rose through a central shaft twined past bubbling algae tanks. He paused at the landing, tail twisted through the bal.u.s.trade, and waited for Mallory to catch up.

The s.p.a.ce at the top of the stair was vaulted and oddly proportioned, higher at one end than the other. Waste s.p.a.ce, moist and dark, with walls composed of long bales of compost held in place by netting. Smelling of clean, sour earth, edible mushrooms festooned every bale in fans, spikes, and streamers. Some were broken, their thick stems weeping fluid, but enough remained intact to give Gavin hope for the survival of anyone left within Rule.

Engine lay at the outskirts of the world, isolated for the protection of everything that would have been threatened by its reactors. Rule lay cupped inside the arch of the wheel, protected by the world's many struts and habitats and active defenses, armored like a heart inside a rib cage. The only place more sheltered was the bridge, at its hub.

Safety lamps still burned dim behind translucent panels by the door, illuminating the landing. The hallway-or mushroom farm-tapered down to the far end. A great double portal loomed in the shadows, lit only by bioluminescence and the filtered light from outside. It was the external aperture of the air lock into Rule.

They had climbed a long tunnel of a spoke to end here, but despite the stairs Mallory's breath still came easy when at last they were side by side at the top. Gavin stretched his neck to slide his beak along the satiny skin of a lightly flushed cheek. Mallory responded by gliding fingers under Gavin's blue-tinged crest, rubbing until the basilisk twisted this way and that to maneuver the scratch to all the itchy spots. Gavin replied with grooming in kind, pulling mahogany ringlets taut and letting them slide through his beak like disordered feathers.

Mallory cast about, frowning. "There should be a guard upon the stair. Why have we not been stopped? Or if they died at their posts"-as they should have, Mallory's tone implied-"where are the bodies? I'd like the answer."

"Well, you know. I'd also like a shuttlecraft," Gavin answered. "A rasher of bacon, and a mined-stone brooch. But you don't hear me complaining."

Mallory offered him a mocking head-tilt. "What's a rasher of bacon?"

"A strip of cured animal flesh," he said. "Meant for eating."

The necromancer made a face like a nauseated cat. "What would you want that for?"

Gavin could not answer. Instead, he turned to groom the feathers on one wing into alignment. While so diverted, he asked, "What shall we examine first?"

"Is there no one to greet us?" Mallory craned stagily from left to right. "Can it be that the Chief Engineer is correct and all Rule has perished? Familiar spirit, what do you sense in this place?"

Gavin fanned his wings to stir the air, hoping there might be lingering scent in some still corner. But the breeze he generated brought only cold traces. "Not a d.a.m.ned thing," he said. "Shall we travel into Rule?"

Flourishing, Mallory bowed and swept Gavin forward with a gesture. He arrowed past, tail and neck extended, and circled twice before the great doors into Rule, buying time until his patron should catch up.

Radio echoes told him the shape of the s.p.a.ce, and that the portal before them was shielded. He could have cut his way in, but there was no benefit in destroying the air lock.

Mallory had ways of opening doors when it was needful.

The necromancer drew up and consulted the controls beside the gate. "Thumb lock, code lock, DNA lock. Ancient tech."

"From the Builders," Gavin replied, circling again.

"Light," Mallory said, without looking up from intent consideration of the lock. Gavin dropped to a forward-bent shoulder. "Ooof," Mallory said. "That's not light."

"This is." A moment's intention, and a fine azure glow, crisp and bright, radiated from Gavin's breast and wings. He focused the light on the lock, so Mallory could lean back a little. Exalt eyes were fine in dimness, but detail work in the dark could challenge even a Conn. "How will you win past?"

"Dead men's memories," Mallory answered, and pressed a thumb to the lock. What would happen now, Gavin knew, was that thumb skin would shape itself into the patterns of some long-dead Conn's print. Mallory's symbiont would manufacture a synthetic approximation of the relevant sections of the dead man's DNA. And finally, the necromancer would reach into the racked archives of untold partial memories and draw up the appropriate response to the blinking challenge lights.

A moment, no more, and the ma.s.sive, well-maintained doors glided whispering into their housings. Gavin fanned his wings for balance as Mallory stepped forward, saying absently, "Watch the claws."

"I never crush anything I don't mean to."

A pa.s.s of the necromancer's hand, and the outer air lock closed behind them. There was no second lock inside. All Mallory needed to do was cycle the lock-a manual command again, crude and robust-wait for the hiss of exchanged air as the inner doors slid wide, and step forward into Rule.

Here, the air was full of information. Without the light of the waystars, the cavernous lobby blazed with full-spectrum lamps that illuminated the repair of ravaged fruit trees. As they paused inside the air lock to orient themselves, a shattered olive humped itself and heaved, straightening a trunk that had twisted when it fell. With a vast creaking and splintering, the rustling of unfolding branches, its colony drew it upright. Gavin thought perhaps the world itself colluded in the righting, because the limbs sprung and swayed as if gravity luffed for a moment in the vicinity, and when they sagged again a patter of unripe olives struck the earthen deck.

"The lights are wasteful," Mallory said. "We'll need to check the resource load and what our intake is. And perhaps advise the Captain to dial them back."

"The trees need them," Gavin said.

"The trees need not to freeze on the Enemy's breath," Mallory reb.u.t.ted. "We haven't a waystar to mine for energy now. Consumables are consumed." A pause, a listening flick of eyes, and Mallory continued. "The Chief Engineer has heard from Prince Bened.i.c.k. He no longer believes the fugitive is coming here."

"A pity," Gavin said, "when we invested so much in arranging a reception."

Mallory's shoulder moved under his talons, rise and fall of a shrug. "At least we heard before we fetched the party favors."

"And the snacks."

Somewhere a bird sang, and Gavin detected the heavy aroma of blossoming jasmine. He could smell people, too, and death, but those scents were cold. Arianrhod and Ariane's engineered disease had done its work; there was no sign of living habitation-or even the bodies of the dead.

Mallory walked forward through air scented with the musky green sap of olive trees. "What good is an apocalypse without snacks?"