Tristen's exhaled breath was loud enough to transmit.
"Benedick, when are you leaving? And how do you plan to track Arianrhod?"
Benedick paused, his helm in one hand. "Now. And with any means at my disposal."
The angel said, "She may be coming toward Rule. We must assume that her plans to wrest control of the ship have not changed, and we've all experienced firsthand the ruthlessness she's willing to bring to bear to implement those plans, up to and including a successful genocide. Central biosystems would be the logical choice for a beachhead, assuming some complex of our suppositions is correct, and some agency--potentially a respawned Asrafil--to which she owed fealty is what sent for her. It would explain why the Chief Engineer and I lost our feeds from the tank.
"Based on my schematics, which are somewhat incomplete, someone departing from the bridge could easily beat her there. Emergency reconfigurations have changed the plan of the world, but central biosystems is not far from Rule, and the bridge was designed to be accessible from Rule. Even without transport, the journey should take less than twenty hours."
Tristen cleared his throat. "It's just a guess that Arianrhod is coming this way."
"A hypothesis," the angel said. "But not one upon which we should gamble everything. Prince Benedick--"
"I'll follow Arianrhod, no matter what the decision. I can track her." He met Caitlin's eyes when he said it.
She believed him, which was most of the problem. "The last thing we need to add to an equation that's already this fucked is a mutiny. And Arianrhod is unlikely to abandon her ambitions simply because she got caught. We don't know what her resources are, or if somewhere she has followers."
"It would mean leaving Perceval on her own," Tristen said.
Caitlin tried to stop herself. She had no doubt in her daughter. Only doubt in the strength of any soul in the face of the weight of all the world. But the words escaped anyway: "Can she manage?"
"She's a Conn," Tristen said.
Caitlin swallowed. "Be there when you wake her, Brother. Please."
4
balanced against the skin of the world
His heart is as hard as a world, as hard as a grinding millstone.
When he rises up, the mighty are afraid: they purify themselves in fear of his violence.
When Tristen returned to the tank farm, he strode without limping, a robe draped over his arm. Healing bone latticed by his symbiont pained him, but the hurt had subsided to the point where discipline and technology rendered it bearable. Pride kept him upright, though he wondered what he had left to sustain his pride on behalf of.
His steps thumped on the crosshatched grating that had earlier scored his hands when he fell against it. In their haste, before the shock wave hit, he had bundled Perceval into the nearest available tank and dived into the neighboring one. It had sealed before he realized he should have taken one on a different circuit to safeguard against failure that might kill them both.
He stopped before Perceval's tank and drew a breath. Sometimes, maybe you got lucky.
The status lights shone steady blue and green, as he had known they would. He had put this off longer than strictly necessary, but it did not seem unfit to him that Perceval should have whatever fragile respite he might win for her.
"I'm ready, angel."
The tank bubbled as it began to drain. The cover slid aside, spilling syrupy liquid through the grate. Within, Perceval slumped forward against her restraints, bones starvation-plain through scarred skin. Tristen held his arms out to support her as the gelatinous webbing slid away. He thought she would crumple and was ready to assist with her slight weight, but as her feet settled to the floor she lifted her chin instead. She raised one hand to the lip of the pod, steadying herself, and blinked open lashes that spiked and stuck.
"Uncle Tristen," she said.
She tilted her head to one side, a silent question. The muscles of his mouth twitched with repressed words. She was the Captain now. The angel would already have told her everything he might impart, faster and more efficiently. So Tristen just nodded and offered his hand as a brace when she stepped down over the lip of the pod.
She managed without it. "You're leaving," she said.
"I am going to intercept Arianrhod." Which Perceval knew, but it meant something to say it.
She looked up at him, blinking thoughtfully, arms wrapped tight over her chest. Belatedly, he recalled the robe and draped it around her, tugging it closed across her chest until its radiant chemical warmth began to unhunch her shoulders. If she had hair longer than a prickle of stubble across her scalp, he would have lifted it from the collar.
Instead, helpless, he stepped back and offered what he could: "I cared for her, too."
"Of course you did. There was never any question about that, and I'm not going to tell you your grief is nothing on mine. That would be childish and without compassion."
She straightened her arms, struggling into oversized sleeves, and sealed the front of the robe with a touch.
He watched her chest expand and contract as she breathed deeply, hard: steeling herself, or the arrested preliminary to a sob. He put his hand on her shoulder, all the comfort he could offer.
She raised her eyes to his again and presented him with a sort of a gift that was also a burden. "Kill Arianrhod for me, Uncle."
She could have no idea what she was asking of him, and it would be cruel to tell her, who needed no further cruelty now. She must have meant it as a kindness, dispensation and vengeance in one bequest. He couldn't make words happen. He pressed her cheek with the back of his hand.
Benedick broke a stimulant capsule under the unconscious resurrected's nose, resting his other hand on the uninjured side of the boy's head to restrain it. The boy jerked back nonetheless, but Benedick's grip kept him from further damaging himself. The resurrected grasped his wrist with a fish-cold hand. "Jsutien," Benedick said.
A familiar face but a foreign name.
Jsutien's eyes opened, nonetheless. Conn eyes, the stamp of Alasdair's paternity, with the faint drooping fold at the corner, but no Conn chill behind them. Not that Oliver had ever been as hard as his elders.
If it were not for Rien, this would be the loss Benedick would feel most deeply. And that was why, when he needed a helper, this had been the resurrected he chose. What must be done was best done without hesitation. The best way to learn to endure a pain was to experience it.
He drew back his hand, disengaging gently from the one Oliver still gripped him with. "Tell me everything that happened."
"Arianrhod," Jsutien said. He blinked and felt the nanobandage on his head with tentative fingers.
Benedick smoothed his expression. Give nothing of use to the subject of the interrogation. "Tell me everything you remember."
"The Engineer left me on watch." He began to sit; Benedick pressed a fingertip to his chest to keep him supine on the stretcher. Fur stirred softly against Benedick's throat as the toolkit peered between strands of his hair, but Jsutien's eyes only flickered to the little construct and dismissed it. "The Engineer had terminated service to the tank," he continued, "and wished me to observe the shutdown protocol so there would be no mishaps." He paused, again pressing his temple. "There's nothing after."
"Do you remember the blow?"
"Blow." His fingers still on the bandage, he frowned. "No. Nothing between watching the lights turn red, and now. Not even a timescroll. It's as if purged."
He must have pushed too hard, because he winced and blinked hazel eyes under ridiculous black ringlets--the perfect kid brother. Except he wasn't, anymore.