Benedick had never known Chelsea well. The gap between their ages was two or three lifetimes of Means run back to back. He'd only met her mother twice; after the tenth or fourteenth, his father's women ran together like lifetimes. The war with Cecelia's daughters had taught Alasdair Conn to never again confuse the question of who held power in the house of Rule by choosing an Exalt paramour--or by Exalting the Means, once their few brief years of beauty had faded. Benedick had almost no organic memory of his own mother. It had passed with the centuries, leaving behind a sort of abstract sentiment and the crystalline images preserved by his symbiont.
But he did remember his anger and disbelief when he had, at long last, come on Errantry to Engine and not only found Caitlin there, but also that everything their father had told them, about only the blood of the house of Conn being fit to survive Exaltation, had been a blatant, baseless lie.
Shortly afterward, Benedick had begun spending less and less time in his father's house. His father had not seemed much concerned by his absence, or to much regret it.
These were things Benedick suspected Chelsea had not yet learned about their family. Perhaps the unforeseen benefit of Ariane's attempt at genocide was that now she never need learn them. So he was at peace with the idea that they should walk companionably side by side, two knights-errant alert to the dangers of the wilderness.
He did not expect much strangeness so close to Engine; the knights and Engineers had civilized everything within a day's travel. This area had been thickly settled and largely given over to agriculture before the nova. There were good maps, and Benedick's colony carried copies of each.
Their progress at first was painstaking. Having eliminated one of the five potential paths--Chelsea could be lying about having seen Arianrhod, but there were resources in place in Rule to cover that eventuality--it remained to determine which of the following four options Arianrhod had actually chosen. Because her trail was hidden well enough that a cursory examination did not suffice, Benedick resorted to the toolkit's enhanced senses.
However, after ninety minutes of sniffing and scurrying, he was forced to admit the strategy was to no avail. The toolkit whiffled disconsolately around the borders of the last corridor, ears slicked back and whiskers quivering. Benedick knew they could become discouraged when set impossible tasks. Consequently, he crouched down and let it run up his arm, the armor transmitting every scratch of its delicate claws as though they prickled on his skin.
He lifted the toolkit to his face and let it rub its pointed muzzle along his chin while Chelsea smiled out of the corner of her mouth.
"The softer side of Benedick Conn," she said, and chuckled when he rolled his eyes.
"Sibling disrespect," he answered. "Everything performs better when praised."
"You didn't learn that from Dad."
"No." Not even a real test of his resolve not to speak ill of the dead. His right hand clenched, remembering the hilt of a blade, the way flesh had offered no resistance to the unblade's blow.
He hadn't carried one since.
He wouldn't have done it for Alasdair, he thought. He hoped. He had done it because Cynric asked. That offered less in the way of absolution than he might have preferred.
He indicated the tunnels with a sweep of his gaze. "Which do you like?"
She squatted, resting her elbows on her armored knees, and chewed her upper lip. "If I were a rogue Engineer," she said, with thoughtful deliberation, "wanted for genocide, and a fugitive from everyone in Rule and Engine both, where would I go? What would I think was my best chance of survival?"
"Before the nova?" He shrugged, and his armor shrugged with him. The toolkit on his shoulder registered a protest, fluffy tail thumping his back. "I would have lit out for the hinterlands. The Broken Holdes, maybe. Cannibal country. Now? If the world is coming back under hegemony, the situation gets stickier. You'd need to do one of four things. One, find a place where Nova can't reach--which might mean fostering a breakaway intelligence of your own. Two, reinvent yourself as something Nova could not recognize. Three, escape the world entirely--and falling off the face of the world is unlikely without a planetfall nearby--or--"
"Four, stage a takeover."
"No doubt," Benedick agreed, "the eventual plan."
"Indeed." Chelsea had pulled the braids from her hair. Now she flipped it back again. Benedick resisted the urge to recommend she cut it. "So logically--"
"She's headed for a null zone." He reached out a hand to pull her to her feet.
She accepted it and stood.
"Nova," he said, and waited for the sense of attention, of connection. "Where is the nearest large null?"
"They're propagating," the angel said in its tone without tone. Not affectless, but serene. He wondered how long it would take for it to develop a personality, or if this were a temporary effect of integrating so many diverse individuals. "However, they are clustering in the area of the largest holdes, at the south pole of the world."
"Near my domaine, you mean."
"On the bottom of the world. Near is a subjective term, but--yes, within tolerances. There is little known about those areas beyond the range of your patrols, Prince Benedick. They have been out of contact for centuries. They would make a good refuge. Also, the Captain was just about to contact you. We have further information to impart. Will you accept a squirt?"
Easier and faster than speech, to allow the angel to simply inject the knowledge into his head. Riskier, too--all sorts of things could come concealed in such code.
Benedick nodded nevertheless, choosing to trust. Trust the angel, trust the Captain his daughter. Trust the world that cradled his bones.
"Send," he said, and felt data spill into his mind. Arianrhod, Samael, Tristen, Asrafil, Mallory. "Head's alive?" he said aloud, one salient fact crystalline among the flood.
Chelsea, beside him, looked up. "How?" she said. "I was in Rule. No survivors."
"Sie barricaded hirself into the kitchens with all the servants sie could find," Benedick said.
Chelsea's smile looked like it might bend her cheeks permanently.
"A little good news is nice," she said, when he raised his eyebrows at her. She glanced aside.
He let her go; adolescents were so embarrassed by their own sentiment. As if one would think less of them for relief or kindness. He said, "Thank you, Nova. My regards to the Captain my daughter."
"Her regards to you," the angel replied. "Prince Tristen wishes to know where you wish to rendezvous. He is leaving Rule as we speak, but still has options as to the route he will take."
Benedick consulted the fragmentary maps in his head. "No rendezvous. We'll try for a pincer. If Arianrhod is moving toward the south pole, we have more of a chance to prevent her from slipping by us if we take parallel routes, and it's possible one team might flush her onto the other. Will you be able to keep us in contact, Nova?"
The angel frowned in his head. "Perhaps. Once you enter the region of null growth, I cannot be sure."
"Well," Benedick said. "We'll span that gulf when we come to it."
9
that ice must be as old
The kingdom of darkness ... is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light.
Having chosen their gamble, Benedick and Chelsea began to run. Not flat-out, exhausting themselves--any chance of catching Arianrhod by merely running after her was long lost--but with a loose-legged lope that would carry them for relentless hours. Every side corridor was a reminder that there was no guarantee they had chosen the right course of action. Ceiling panels stayed open on the night beyond, the gray-green light of the shipwreck nebula staining Chelsea's face a sickly color. Despite the lack of external light, floods washed great swaths of causeway in full-spectrum light.