Grail - By Elizabeth Bear Page 0,55

wavelet she made leaving a ring of froth and wetness behind. “You are forthright,” she said. “I like that.”

The patron smiled and sipped her drink. From her expression, it pleased her better than everything else about the day. “We are talking about the people who contaminated your preserve with symbionts against your will. Who engineered the colonies to begin with, and tortured and murdered innocent life-forms to do so. Cynric Conn and her minions respect no boundary; they adhere to no ethical compass beyond what I want, I shall have.”

“A stiff dick has no conscience,” Dorcas said.

The patron grinned. Humans, Dust thought, were so … erratic.

“Exactly,” the patron said. “And a Conn dick is doubly blind to consequence.”

Dorcas smoothed one hand across her hair. Her lips thinned. She drew in a deep breath and said, “And what are the consequences of your conquest of the world? We’ll descend on Grail and take what we want of her? We’ll abandon negotiation in favor of force?”

Dust saw the flicker of frustration cross the patron’s face, heard the skip of her elevated heart rate. “We’ll survive,” she said, “by whatever means necessary. Cooperation, of course, is to be preferred, as is a nonviolent solution.”

Dorcas smiled. It was not a friendly smile, or even one of complicity. When she set her cup down on the table, it made so little sound against the woven vines that even Dust’s honed ears could scarcely detect it. “I find that reprehensible,” she said.

Dust had not expected his patron to be rocked back in her chair, but amid his bower of leaves he nevertheless—if asked—must have confessed himself gratified that she frowned. Fleetingly, so fleetingly a Mean might have missed it, though Dorcas most assuredly did not.

“You would find me a very bad enemy,” the patron said. “I think it would be wise to reconsider. There are elements among your people that are already in sympathy with me.”

“I said I found it reprehensible,” Dorcas said. “I did not say I would under no circumstances cooperate. I know who you are and I know who you were. I know what you stand reduced from, and I know what you did in Rule and among the Deckers who allied with you last. You are a Conn through and through, Ariane, and rotten with it. But it’s also possible that you are our only hope for survival.”

Dorcas stared calmly at the patron. The patron stared too, seeming taken aback for the first time in Dust’s experience.

There was a sound when the patron set her cup down, and a louder one of scuffed turf and tearing grass when she shoved her chair back from the table. Her hand fell on the freshly machined hilt of the blade she wore over her clothing, a common enough affectation among Engineers. “How dare you speak to me like that?”

Dorcas seemed unimpressed by the threat of unblade, or Conn. She did not rise, but a needler appeared in her hand, shivering slightly but accurately aimed. The patron gave no sign that she had noticed it. Her weapon remained in its sheath, ready on the instant to be drawn. And in the leaves of the branches behind her, Dust saw something heavy, shining, and silk-black coil and tongueflicker, ready on the instant to strike.

“Ariane,” she said. “Really. I was dead before you were out of diapers, and you expect fear? I have said I will help you. I will promise not to reveal what I know to the Captain or her dogs.” Her mouth bent in a moue of disgust. “But don’t expect me to lick your boots into the deal.”

Inside his bower, the frail remnant of Dust huddled close to a branch. He would leap if he must, join the fray in defense of his mistress. Worthy or not, despised or adored, she was his, and he was hers. Even Dorcas’s synbiotic monster-snake would not intimidate him into remaining in hiding if Ariane were to draw her blade.

And she might have, except Dorcas smiled, showing teeth. In that expression, Dust glimpsed the woman she had not been, the woman whose body she now inhabited. He remembered Sparrow Conn, and he could imagine it was her voice that said, “Though you grind my bones for bread, Commodore, you will not make me grovel.”

She did not stand. She sipped her coffee. She did not lower the barrel of her weapon. She raised her head to regard the patron and she smiled.

“You know,” she said, “combat reflexes live in