Grail - Elizabeth Bear [62]
Tristen dipped his head and brushed his mouth against the necromancer’s cool lips. Mallory kissed back, lightly, affectionate, until Tristen pulled away. If it was not the great passion of Tristen’s youth, well. Great passion led so easily to great tragedy.
He said, “Pack your things, then, if you’ll risk it. Though I lead you unto death.”
The necromancer smiled. “Death is my middle name.”
These days, the AE decks were accessible by a simple lift. A lift which functioned properly, which zipped them dramatically around the inside curve of the world from Rule (complete with panoramic and perhaps unsettling views), and which delivered Tristen and Mallory neatly to the Deckers’ port of entry. As it was settling into the docking cradle, the door lights blinking yellow-to-blue one by one, Mallory whispered, “Don’t you ever miss the adventure of the old days?”
“Almost as much as I miss the romance and glamour of epidemic fratricide,” Tristen said out of the corner of his mouth as the lift doors opened. He just caught a glimpse of Mallory’s answering smirk as the mirrored interior surface slipped aside.
It wasn’t love, thank all things holy. But they understood one another, and sometimes that was enough. More than enough.
They came out of the lift with their helms open, a display of blatant confidence, into a surprisingly barren stretch of corridor. Little of the world was not blanketed in biosphere. Throughout her holdes and corridors, her domains and anchores, spiders spun and air mosses hung from every stanchion; lichens crept along the corners where footsteps rarely fell, to be groomed up again by hungry ship cats; apparent shadows dissolved at a motion into flocks of black-blue butterflies. But here, the deck gleamed dully through scratchy polish; the bulkheads were stark, the trim painted white and the fittings glistening.
“Sterile,” Tristen murmured, just loud enough for his armor’s collar mike to pick up the word and transmit it to Mallory.
“Dead,” Mallory answered, running both hands through tight dark curls. The gesture displayed that they were not immediately armed without offering any hint of appeasement or lessened status, and Tristen admired it.
Voice raising, the necromancer called, “Hello? I am Mallory, and this is Tristen Conn. We come on the Captain’s business, as you were informed! Is there someone here to greet us?”
Mallory’s phrasing granted them a right to be there. Someone less experienced might have asked permission, presented themselves as envoys, or begged truce.
But for this, that would not do. Tristen and Jordan had not conquered these people in blood and fire for Tristen to walk among them in supplication, no matter how fraught the situation had become.
Besides, it was just as possible that, other than one or two mercenaries or radicals, the Deckers had had nothing to do with the attack on the Bridge. It was easily possible that the Deckers and the Conn family and its allies were being maneuvered into fighting one another—a conflict that could only bring blood and destruction on them all, and leave the victor weakened even if it didn’t create a patent power vacuum for some mutual enemy to exploit.
Yet show of strength that it was, it received no answer.
“Nova?” Tristen said.
“The holde beyond the next gate shows every sign of being normal, fully functioning, and inhabited,” the Angel answered. “Shall I announce you, First Mate?”
“No, thank you.” That would be just what would endear them to the Deckers—an Angel appearing wreathed in flame and glory midair, bringing word that the Conns had dropped by to ask a few questions and borrow a cup of sweets. “We’ll let ourselves in the back door. Although if you could override the locking mechanism, Nova—”
“I would,” the Angel answered, “but somebody else has already overwritten it. The door’s been hacked. I am afraid you will have to open it manually.”
“You mean by force.”
“I do.”
Tristen slipped Mirth from its sheath. It wasn’t an unblade. It could not slice the door from its moorings, scramble the colonies and programs