"We have contact," Benedick said, his words confirmed a moment later when Tristen felt the angel's attention fall upon him. "She's not manifesting an avatar"--he raised an eyebrow at Samael's speckled form--"so as not to draw hostile attention."
"Does she know where to go next?"
"I do," Benedick said. "At least in general terms, though the question of how to get there is open." He glanced at Chelsea, who shook out her hair.
"Leviathan," she said.
Tristen had never seen it himself, but he understood that the blood draining from an amelanistic face could be a spectacular sight. Mallory actually grabbed his elbow, as if fearing he might topple over.
Mallory said, "Cynric and coincidences, indeed."
Gavin snorted. "Don't look at me. Just because the puppeteer's hand is up your ass, it doesn't mean you know what they are thinking."
Samael shot the basilisk a scathing glance, the snail-shell eye glinting dully. "Tell me about it."
Mallory unwound those fingers from Tristen's arm and turned slowly to face Samael's avatar. Quietly, breathing through a taut throat, the necromancer intoned, "He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear."
"The key," Samael said.
Tristen looked from one to the other. "Did it unlock anything this time?"
The angel stared back, at first seemingly nonplussed by Tristen's sarcasm. But glacially, as if with deliberation, the long vertical lines of his hound-creased face rearranged themselves into a grin.
"Hell, yes," the angel said, waving his immaterial hand. "Follow me."
Samael--looking much the worse for experience and worn thin--led Benedick, his siblings, Mallory, and Gavin at a quick trot, down through still more barren corridors.
"This is the way to the Broken Holdes," Benedick said, as his colony reminded him with images and maps of when he had been here before.
"To and through," Samael said. "Mallory's code and the location have opened the way. We're going outside."
"Into the belly of the Enemy," Benedick said.
Mallory hid a laugh inside a sneeze. "Where the Leviathans dwell."
"Great," Chelsea said. "I hope there's some undamaged armor down here somewhere, because Benedick's and mine ended up at the bottom of a compost heap. And it seems Mallory doesn't have any either. I don't know about you two, but I don't fancy skinny-dipping in space."
The mammoth calf touched her wrist and Chelsea startled. Benedick--who a moment before had been fraternally pleased that she had the mature awareness to notice other people's needs in tandem with her own--lurched forward to intervene and found Tristen's hand on his chest.
"Wait," Tristen said, and for a moment Benedick wanted to smash his hand away and remind him of all that caution and cowardice had cost them.
But he was Benedick Conn. He did not perform his drama, and as he raised his gaze to meet Tristen's, it occurred to him that the sin he had been about to assign his brother was his own. Tristen had never been overmuch for prudence, and his ingrained recklessness had cost him as dearly as ever Benedick's reserve. He settled his nerves and said, "Yes, Brother?"
To his shock, it was the calf that answered: "--"
He never could have named the words it spoke in, or recited the sentences. But whatever they were, they filled him with comprehension.
Chelsea, too, apparently. She pointed with her thumb to a sealed hatchway. "Through here? How do you know that?"
"--" the calf answered. It knew because it knew. Because, Benedick surmised, it had been made to know. Because, it said, it was a Bible.
He swallowed a dizzying surge of resentment. "Cynric," he muttered, as if that explained everything.
Gavin--ensconced on Mallory's shoulder--arched his thick neck and fluffed his crest. "Do you ever stop to wonder if maybe she just couldn't have explained things?"
"Sure," Chelsea said. "Because we all listen so well."
She stepped between her brothers, skirting the mammoth and pushing to the forefront of the group.
"Through here?" she said, turning to glance over her shoulder. Even more than the healing burns on her cheek, Benedick was struck by the line of her scapula, the way the bone projected through flesh and worn clothing.
"I haven't been taking care of you," he said, when she caught him staring. "You're thin."
"So are you," she answered. "We've been busy."
She palmed the door lock, but the door didn't open. "Wait," Mallory said. "Let me."
But as the necromancer addressed the door, the mammoth calf interrupted. Benedick thought he might almost be growing accustomed to its manner of speech. Or unspeech. Or what-you-might-call-it.
"A different verse?" Mallory said, with a glance aside to the animal. "Why don't you just tell us?"
The mammoth stared at the necromancer, blinking. After a moment, with an exasperated wave of its trunk, it spoke a few unrepeatable words that provoked Mallory to irritated laughter.
"Because we're meant to look after ourselves, Princess Cynric, and so you didn't bother to tell your construct the answers? Oh, very well. I hope it's still Job? I could just run through the whole thing, you know--oh. One attempt? Well, I guess I'd better get it right the first time, then."
Benedick was somewhat accustomed to the manners and means of sorcerers. He did not even have to pretend unsurprise as the necromancer laid both hands palm to palm as if praying, rested lips on fingertips, and stood for several minutes merely addressing the door. For some time, nothing happened except Gavin rustling boredly and the movement of Mallory's lips--not quite enough to count as mouthing the words, but certainly the tic of somebody recalling memorized phrases.
Tristen's armor creaked when he folded his arms.
Just as Benedick was about to interrupt, Mallory flashed a grin. "Hah. I knew it was back there somewhere."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm a necromancer," Mallory said, tapping skull with forefinger. "What did you think that meant? I get information from dead people. Gavin, you can just whisper it in my ear."
The basilisk rustled, crest flat, head skulking low between hunched shoulders. "Don't you da--"
"You will tell me what you remember."
"And if I don't remember?"
"You mean if you don't want to remember?" Mallory shrugged. "Then we all die. Gavin--"
"Every time I look at her," the basilisk said, "I come back a little less myself."
Benedick scrubbed the corners of his eyes. "Space this. Can't we just cut it open?"
Mallory's head shook back and forth. "For me, critter."
And Gavin sighed and tucked his head under his wing, but from the look of comprehension on Mallory's face, he gave the necromancer what they needed.
Mallory placed a palm flat against the panel beside the door and recited, "In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him."
There was a creak, a hesitation, a groan of tired metal and fatigued machinery. A fine whitish dust, more like lime scale than rust, showered from the top of the frame.
The door glided open and Chelsea, straight-spined, brushed past Mallory with murmured thanks and stepped through. Benedick stood aside so Tristen could follow, but Tristen gestured him on. "I have armor."
"Right."
Benedick passed through the entry, Mallory--with attendant basilisk--only joining the procession when he and Chelsea were well inside. Beyond, he found himself in an armory like any other, the suits lined up at rest from wall to wall. They were all alike, uncustomized, suitable for anyone to take and make his own.