Grail - Elizabeth Bear [64]
Dust’s patron had always been the sort to enforce her rights and insist upon her privileges. She took status seriously and used it as a tool to get her will. Dust knew it rankled in her like a shard under the skin that she had fallen so far as to be going before Dorcas—an Engineer and a Go-Back—to beg assistance. But he’d also seen how ruthless she was, which left him wondering if there were any way this proposed alliance could end without another heap of bodies.
His patron had never been quite sane.
But he was her angel, now, and she was his Conn, and he would do as she bid. It was in the nature of angels to serve.
He accompanied her into a lift—her body’s trusted status in Engine let them travel freely—and from thence into one of the great arterial trunks that served commuters around the world. The paths from Engine to Rule were long, but they had been among the first ones Caitlin Conn and Captain Perceval had ordered repaired once the resources were available.
Though Dust and his patron were not going all the way to Rule, the same arterials would make the trip to the Heaven of the Edenites much more practical given their limited window for travel and negotiations.
They traveled in silence. His patron did not invite him to ride on her shoulder, as another might, so he sat by her ankles and tucked his tail around his toes to present an appearance of tidiness. When they arrived, Dust could tell that his patron was insulted that no entourage awaited them—only Dorcas in her clean robes, embroidered about the collar, with her hat hung down her back under the thick yellow coils of her hair.
“Hello,” Dorcas said. “Your pardon if I seem surprised; your messenger did not explain you had been rebodied in the form of a Conn.”
Dorcas’s confession of surprise did nothing to smooth the patron’s prickles.
“Who did you think you would be meeting?” the patron asked, sweet reason and imperiousness mixing in a tone that Dust knew was every reason for caution. Surely he had not been so timid when he was a larger angel?
But now he was a toolkit only, a small and cowardly beast, and not the black-mirrored dragon of yore. You changed; you adapted; you made the most of what you were and strove to become more. He would survive. Though we are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth—
“I try to assume nothing,” Dorcas said. “Come, be welcome. Let me make you comfortable and bring you refreshment.”
She turned and moved on, gesturing the patron to follow. She took the lead, since she obviously knew where they were going. The toolkit scampered at her heels, too small to manage even a semidignified trot.
This was not the sort of society where anyone waited on anyone else, and Dust could sense his patron’s disapproval of this, too. She hid it well, though. The momentary stiffness of spine melted into calm dignity, and the smile on her lips even seemed to touch her eyes. She carried herself like the princess she had been, and part of the training of a princess was graciousness. She even managed to seem pleased when Dorcas showed her the white-painted vine-woven table and chairs set under the shade of a glossy-leafed coffee tree heavy with bright red berries. Dust could only read the exasperation rising in his patron by that head-tilt and the little smile—the one that said to anyone who knew her well: I am going to eat your liver.
As if reading the situation, Dorcas pulled out the patron’s chair and