had no fear that Nova would seal up the damage behind them. He was still sparing in using his sword as a door-opening technique, but at least it was possible now. Fifty years before, he would have run the risk of spacing entire holdes. Nova was much more in control of herself than she had been.
—except perhaps not. Because when Tristen slipped through the gap, he was met by the evidence of carnage.
No one had tidied the bodies. They lay where they had fallen, or where they had dragged themselves—several close enough to the entrance that Tristen had just cut through that he had to step over outflung arms and legs to clear the passage for Mallory. “Seal up,” he said, his armor responding instantly. As the helm telescoped up to lock him within, he heard the answering whirr of Mallory’s device.
He also heard the click of Mallory’s footsteps descending the path within the door. There was no point in turning; the necromancer was quite capable of self-defense, and would be dogging Tristen’s heels anyway.
Inside, the holde was just as he remembered, other than being full of dead people. The Deckers preferred—had preferred?—a more regimented approach to ecobalance than most of the world, and their holde was divided into close, tidy rooms lined with hydroponics tanks and workstations. Hanging baskets under full-spectrum lights dripped strawberries and cherry tomatoes. Tristen suspected that, as one spiraled closer to the exterior of the holde, there would be panels allowing natural light in, as much of this would have been built or renovated while the world lay becalmed in the orbit of the shipwreck stars.
But now, this pleasant, gardened, orderly workspace stank of vomit and evacuated bowels. Stringy-haired corpses slumped in corners or draped over chairs. “Your readouts, Nova?”
“I am listening,” the Angel said at his side. “And through your colony I see what you see. But I cannot perceive it directly. Within these walls, my awareness has been edited.”
“Just like old times,” Tristen said bitterly. “Are you having any trouble healing the door?”
“Given current circumstances,” Mallory suggested, “I think I shall turn around and check.”
The necromancer vanished between leaves, only to return, nodding, a moment later. “The door is cured.”
“Unlike this place.” Tristen crouched to check another set of life-signs, knowing the gesture was futile.
“Someone cleaned up after himself,” Mallory said. “They were Exalt, these Deckers. But they were new to it and untrained, and they were not Conns. Whatever was unleashed on them, you or I might have known how to defend against, but here it was like nerve gas in a kindergarten.”
“Indeed,” Tristen answered. “Why does this remind me of something?”
“Shhh.” Mallory raised a hand.
Tristen had opened his mouth to ask the question before he realized that, no matter what he said, it would be stupid. He held his tongue and watched as Mallory crossed the holde to crouch, then crawl, peering under the edge of a hydroponics tank full of lush, burgundy-veined beet greens and tiny purple beets no bigger than marbles.
“Prince Tristen,” the necromancer said, “I suspect I have found a survivor.”
Dust should have known it was all going wrong as soon as his patron shrugged her appropriated body into a more comfortable arrangement—which included locking up the Conn personality who usually animated the borrowed form—and allowed Dust to lead her through the world. He was surprised that she would come to Dorcas as a penitent, but he supposed, as it was his patron who had desired this meeting, it was incumbent upon her to travel. And Dorcas had shown no desire to step forth from her Heaven and explore the possibilities presented her. She might hear supplicants from her own domaine and holdfast, like any Queen, but that was different than going to see someone.
Dust’s patron had always been the sort to enforce her rights and insist upon her privileges. She took status seriously and used it as a tool to get her will. Dust knew it rankled in her like a shard under the skin that she had fallen so far as to be going before Dorcas—an Engineer and a Go-Back—to beg assistance. But he’d also seen how ruthless she was, which left him wondering if there were any way this proposed alliance could end without another heap of bodies.
His patron had never been quite sane.
But he was her angel, now, and she was his Conn, and he would do as she bid. It was in the nature of angels to serve.
He accompanied her into a lift—her