Grail - Elizabeth Bear [66]
Dorcas seemed unimpressed by the threat of unblade, or Conn. She did not rise, but a needler appeared in her hand, shivering slightly but accurately aimed. The patron gave no sign that she had noticed it. Her weapon remained in its sheath, ready on the instant to be drawn. And in the leaves of the branches behind her, Dust saw something heavy, shining, and silk-black coil and tongueflicker, ready on the instant to strike.
“Ariane,” she said. “Really. I was dead before you were out of diapers, and you expect fear? I have said I will help you. I will promise not to reveal what I know to the Captain or her dogs.” Her mouth bent in a moue of disgust. “But don’t expect me to lick your boots into the deal.”
Inside his bower, the frail remnant of Dust huddled close to a branch. He would leap if he must, join the fray in defense of his mistress. Worthy or not, despised or adored, she was his, and he was hers. Even Dorcas’s synbiotic monster-snake would not intimidate him into remaining in hiding if Ariane were to draw her blade.
And she might have, except Dorcas smiled, showing teeth. In that expression, Dust glimpsed the woman she had not been, the woman whose body she now inhabited. He remembered Sparrow Conn, and he could imagine it was her voice that said, “Though you grind my bones for bread, Commodore, you will not make me grovel.”
She did not stand. She sipped her coffee. She did not lower the barrel of her weapon. She raised her head to regard the patron and she smiled.
“You know,” she said, “combat reflexes live in the muscle memory more than they do in the mind. Do you know who wore this body before me, Ariane?”
The patron did not step back, though Dust saw the shiver through her calf muscles as she fought the reflex and won.
“Allies?” she said.
“After a fashion,” Dorcas agreed. “Please, drink your coffee. It would be a pity to waste.”
Tristen felt his armor shift to support his weight as he rocked back on his heels. “A survivor? Are you sure?”
“Living things are not my specialty,” Mallory admitted, “but it seems likely. That’s what a pulse and breathing generally mean, isn’t it?”
“When you’re right, Necromancer,” Tristen said, “you’re usually right.”
“Here, bring me more light.”
Mallory’s helm lights already illuminated the underside of the table with a dim glow. It radiated up through the water and the roots of the plants encapsulated in the transparent table, casting eerie, watery ripples of luminescence and shadow on the bulkheads and the ceiling. Tristen leaned down to bring his own units under the edge, where they could contribute a more indirect illumination. When he could see around Mallory—and his sensors could pick up what the necromancer’s body obscured—he grunted into his helm. Breath fogged his faceplate for a moment before the moisture controls cleared it, but what vanished behind the mist did not change when it emerged again.
Mallory cupped something the color and size of a lime in armored palms. It was warm; a tiny heartbeat shook it. Tiny breaths lifted its feathers and then let them fall smooth again. Its wings were no longer than Tristen’s middle finger. They stretched across Mallory’s hands, delicate primary feathers splayed as if they were fingers, too.
“Cynric’s pets look like that,” Tristen said. He backed up, allowing Mallory to scuff out from under the hydroponics table on armored knees that grated against the floor. Mallory stood, still cradling the minute casualty. “A stunning coincidence.”
“She didn’t do this,” Mallory said, turning to survey the dead.
“She wouldn’t have left behind evidence if she did,” Tristen agreed. Cynric did not make merely human errors. Her mistakes were more on the epic scale, her failings those of demigods. “So the question is, who did it, and how was it done, and what is the purpose in making it look like Cynric?”
Mallory’s head moved inside the armor