Grail - Elizabeth Bear [63]
But he did hope that nobody on the other side of the door was waiting for him with Charity naked and deadly to hand. Mirth wouldn’t stand up to fencing an unblade for long—if it stood at all. “Prepare to repair the door behind us, please.”
“Of course,” Nova said, and Tristen raised his daughter’s sword.
When he brought it down, it rent metal, filling the corridor with the hiss of escaping air as pressure equalized through the tight gap. Tristen’s ears popped, and based on Mallory’s grimace, his were not the only ones.
“Sorry,” he said, and swung Mirth up again. Two more strokes made a gap wide enough for them to step through, and Tristen had no fear that Nova would seal up the damage behind them. He was still sparing in using his sword as a door-opening technique, but at least it was possible now. Fifty years before, he would have run the risk of spacing entire holdes. Nova was much more in control of herself than she had been.
—except perhaps not. Because when Tristen slipped through the gap, he was met by the evidence of carnage.
No one had tidied the bodies. They lay where they had fallen, or where they had dragged themselves—several close enough to the entrance that Tristen had just cut through that he had to step over outflung arms and legs to clear the passage for Mallory. “Seal up,” he said, his armor responding instantly. As the helm telescoped up to lock him within, he heard the answering whirr of Mallory’s device.
He also heard the click of Mallory’s footsteps descending the path within the door. There was no point in turning; the necromancer was quite capable of self-defense, and would be dogging Tristen’s heels anyway.
Inside, the holde was just as he remembered, other than being full of dead people. The Deckers preferred—had preferred?—a more regimented approach to ecobalance than most of the world, and their holde was divided into close, tidy rooms lined with hydroponics tanks and workstations. Hanging baskets under full-spectrum lights dripped strawberries and cherry tomatoes. Tristen suspected that, as one spiraled closer to the exterior of the holde, there would be panels allowing natural light in, as much of this would have been built or renovated while the world lay becalmed in the orbit of the shipwreck stars.
But now, this pleasant, gardened, orderly workspace stank of vomit and evacuated bowels. Stringy-haired corpses slumped in corners or draped over chairs. “Your readouts, Nova?”
“I am listening,” the Angel said at his side. “And through your colony I see what you see. But I cannot perceive it directly. Within these walls, my awareness has been edited.”
“Just like old times,” Tristen said bitterly. “Are you having any trouble healing the door?”
“Given current circumstances,” Mallory suggested, “I think I shall turn around and check.”
The necromancer vanished between leaves, only to return, nodding, a moment later. “The door is cured.”
“Unlike this place.” Tristen crouched to check another set of life-signs, knowing the gesture was futile.
“Someone cleaned up after himself,” Mallory said. “They were Exalt, these Deckers. But they were new to it and untrained, and they were not Conns. Whatever was unleashed on them, you or I might have known how to defend against, but here it was like nerve gas in a kindergarten.”
“Indeed,” Tristen answered. “Why does this remind me of something?”
“Shhh.” Mallory raised a hand.
Tristen had opened his mouth to ask the question before he realized that, no matter what he said, it would be stupid. He held his tongue and watched as Mallory crossed the holde to crouch, then crawl, peering under the edge of a hydroponics tank full of lush, burgundy-veined beet greens and tiny purple beets no bigger than marbles.
“Prince Tristen,” the necromancer said, “I suspect I have found a survivor.”
Dust should have known it was all going