Head twisted, one hand still on the handle, the oft-repaired panel held open a crack. Sie glanced back the way they had come, an artist's study in conflict. The mastiff curve of hir heavy neck, the longing stare--that burned familiar yet elusive in Gavin's memory also.
It troubled him. He was a machine intelligence. His was not an organic memory, lossy and prone to gaps and iterative errors. There should be nothing in his experience that he could not recall with the definition and precision of a holographic recording.
He'd been here before. He knew it. He knew Head.
And yet, he had never been here before. And he could tell from the caution with which sie approached their interactions that Head did not know him.
"Go on," Mallory urged, a hand lightly on Head's wrist. "We can take it from here. See to the Prince on his Homecoming."
Head's evident reluctance should have been comical, except that Gavin had witnessed the grim determination with which sie defended the lives in hir charge. "I should--"
"The Prince will forgive you leaving us unescorted," Mallory said gently, "in the face of exigencies, and the shortness of your staff. I believe he will be grateful to find that any survivors remain at all. You have given extraordinary service, Head."
Gavin resettled his wings, a triple-flip that left the feathertips crossed in the opposite direction from before, and leaned a shoulder against Mallory's ear.
"Well," Head said, wavering on hir feet like an indecisive pendulum. "You are the Prince's servants, on the Prince's business--"
Mallory did not correct hir, and even laid an unnecessary warning hand over Gavin's feet. "We can find our way."
Head twisted both hands in hir apron. "Mind you don't move things around. There might be something in there of the old Commodore's, or Lady Ariane's, that the Prince will want."
"Indeed, good Head," Mallory said, and swept hir away with a bow that made the stout housekeeper giggle like a child.
Not until sie had vanished down the corridor and they were well inside the door did Gavin say, very quietly, "Angel?"
Mallory tickled the feathers alongside his neck. "I heard."
"You suppose something held on inside the static field? Something not the angel?"
The necromancer, moving rapidly through lushly comfortable surroundings, made a noncommittal noise. "Back here, do you suppose?"
"It would explain why parts of the world are going dark to communications," Gavin said, and added, "Nova will eat it if it finds it."
"Then maybe Nova shouldn't find it. Oh, look, a concealed door. It can't be identity-coded; the new Commodore has to be able to win entrance after the death of the old one, so the world wouldn't permit it. What do you suppose Alasdair would choose for a code?"
The entrance was not heavily concealed. It had been hidden behind a facade and a screen of greenery, but acceleration forces had smashed the plants and cracked the paneling, leaving the armored door obvious to casual inspection.
Gavin cocked his head at the seal. No, this hadn't been there before, according to his fragmented memories. But Alasdair Conn, in his own way, had been a predictable man.
"Cecelia," Gavin said, without hesitation. "Open the door."
If his hearing apparatus had been made of membrane and bone, he would have winced as hard as Mallory did at the grinding noise that followed. The structure was plainly warped, but the servos struggled valiantly against the damage. The door jerked along its track, finally sticking fast when it had opened a spare half meter. Beyond it, Gavin could see a second door, this one old-fashioned and constructed with a single lever handle, its finish tarnished by the rub of many hands.
Mallory had to crane to do it, but managed to offer Gavin a respectful stare nonetheless. "That wasn't your memory, you jumped-up power tool."
"It's mine now."
"Cecelia, as in Alasdair's second wife?"
Gavin fanned pale wings for balance. "It didn't end well."
Mallory pushed against the concealed door. It had been repaired many times and no longer operated automatically. But expert counterweighting ensured that, despite its mass, it swung open lightly to Mallory's exertion.
The chamber within was small, a sanctum with a single "chair"--of sorts--sculpted of the living earth of the deck. The seat had humped arms, a high back that sloped like a pyramid, and a surface upholstered in deep, springy grass. One soft light shone down on it from above, filtered as if through leaves. A mirror hung before it, the surface lightly rippling in response to every vibration and change of air pressure as they moved into the room. It all could have been the throne room of some nature deity.
This was not the complex of labs and cloning tanks that haunted Gavin's borrowed memories. He craned over his shoulder, wishing Head were still close enough to ask, but sie was long gone. Instead, Gavin hopped to the back of the chair and turned to face Mallory, slightly surprised when the necromancer did not sit. Instead, much circling ensued, Mallory circumnavigating the tiny chamber and trailing fingers along the walls. "Is this isolated as well?"
"If the door were shut," Gavin answered. "Is it safe to seal ourselves in?"
"Is anything?" Mallory crossed to the chamber door and tugged it until the latch clicked. Arms crossed, leaning against the now-seamless panel, Mallory said, "You can come out now. We won't hurt you."
No answer but silence.
The necromancer sighed, stretched arms wide like a dramatized conjuror, and arched fingers back until Gavin heard the joints crack. "Come out, come out, wherever you are."
"There could be dozens of angel fragments lurking in shielded corners of the world," Gavin said. "They may not have any awareness to speak of. They may have had everything consumed but their purpose, or some scrap of identity, or--"
"The ghosts of angels," Mallory said. "Their revenants."
"Junk DNA," Gavin said. "Fragments of reassorted viruses." Gavin felt the earth of the throne separate beneath scoring talons. The colony within it moved to heal the damage at once, grass growing cleanly over the cuts. "What a stroke of good fortune we thought to bring along a necromancer," he said. Then he settled back smugly, neck drawn in a tight S-curve, and added, "He's in the throne."
"Well then. It remains to lure him out." Mallory moved forward and stroked the grassy arm of the chair.
"The fragmentary angel? The same fragmentary angel, do you suppose?"
"A fragmentary angel. Once we get him out, we can ask if it's the same one who is haunting the kitchen." Mallory crouched before the throne and dug the fingers of both hands into the earth with a grimace. "Come out, come out, wherever you are--"
When the necromancer drew back cupped, separated hands, something shimmered between them. A swirl of nanotech, a tiny fragment of a colony. Maybe--just maybe--the scrap of an angel. Tautly, as if breath control were necessary to keep from blowing the fragile thing away, Mallory said, "Gavin? He would get lost in me."
Gavin shook out his wings in discontent, tail coiling against the backslope of the throne. Mallory was asking him to take in the broken colony, shelter it among his own symbiont, give it strength and a place to grow until they could recompile and reboot it. "You think you know who that is."
"I think if it fought off a plague, then it's likely Samael. I think we need to get him safely away, and retrieve the rest of what's left of him, before Tristen sits in this chair."
"You hope it's Samael."
"Who else would think to use a kitchen in Rule and the shielded biosystem core as his refuge of last resort?"
Gavin hopped closer, down to the edge of the seat, but did not reach out to sweep the colony to his breast. "What if it's Asrafil?"
Mallory held up the hands, the angel cradled between them. "Then, sweetheart, you eat him."