Grail - By Elizabeth Bear Page 0,58

anchore—”

“And kept from being aware that she was being kept out of this anchore,” Nova added dryly.

Mallory snorted. “Any program—be it based in wetware or hardware—can be hacked.”

“And did you hack her memories?” Tristen asked, stroking the dead woman’s hair back with his armored hand.

“The machine memories were wiped,” Mallory said. “I think these people were used as a stalking horse by a greater enemy. I think that enemy was thorough in covering his or her tracks.”

The smile that curved lovely lips was smug enough to make Tristen shiver with memory. This is hardly the time.

But what were a few dozen more dead in his lifetime?

“I notice,” Tristen said—aware that, in terms of cool professionalism, he was overcompensating, “that you specifically mention the machine memories.”

“The meat is empty,” Mallory said. “No electrical impulses left at all. She’s dead.” The necromancer’s palms rasped softly, nervously, against one another. “The local monitoring records have been purged, but there are still neurochemical traces.”

Tristen felt his eyebrows rise.

“Oxytocin, serotonin. Whoever killed her was someone she trusted to do her no harm.”

“A friend?”

“A friend.”

* * *

By the time they’d returned to Rule, Tristen had made his decision. He left Mallory to report to Perceval—the broad details had been handled through Nova and the com, but the Captain would have questions, and both Mallory and Tristen had thought it best if their suspicion that revenant shards of Dust and Ariane might be involved was broken to Perceval in person—and brought the unconscious parrotlet to its creator for a detailed conversation.

Cynric might have been hard at work. She might have been napping on her feet. It was possible, Tristen admitted, pausing just inside the threshold of the door that had slipped open for him as automatically as if he were invited, that she had learned a way to manage both at once, sleeping with one side of her brain at a time like a cetacean. He did not think he’d ever seen her lie down to rest, or even claim a need for it.

But then, she was Cynric the Sorceress—or she was all that was left of what had been Cynric the Sorceress—and she was as much Engine as Engineer.

“Hello, Tristen,” she said without turning. Her head was tilted back on her long neck, the long almond-shaped eyes closed so her lashes smudged her cheeks, her hair—straight as Perceval’s, and browner—trailing across her loose robes to fall the length of her spine. “You have brought something of mine?”

“I think it’s ill or injured.” He came up beside her, extending the transparent clamshell in which he’d nested the parrotlet. It lay amid fleece like an icing decoration on meringue, green on white with its tiny head tucked close to the body, its papery eyelids closed over eyes round as beads.

“Hacked,” she said, accepting the package. It opened at her touch, and she gently insinuated her fingers under the bird’s still form. “How odd. This isn’t the first time anyone has brought me one of these.”

She lifted the tiny thing and put its head in her mouth, then removed it—damp—and frowned. “It’s been cut off from the rest, poor thing. Somebody who should be performing his own research is attempting to ride my labcoattails, Prince Tristen.”

The shake of her head made her eyes catch the light, and the stud through her nose glowed dimly—the same pale green as the parrotlet. Tristen watched as it shuddered, raised its head slowly, and shook itself as if awakening from a hard dream that had left it logy.

“Hmm,” she said, studying it, then shifted her attention to Tristen. “Thank you. I suppose it will be all right now. Where did you find this?”

“Among a few dozen murdered Deckers.” He handed her a crystal, the same recordings of what he and Mallory had seen that Mallory was delivering to the Captain. She accepted and pocketed it; he had no doubt she would download and integrate the information as soon as he departed. “What could you do with one of those birds? If you were unfriendly to the world, or to its Captain?”

Cynric opened the cage of her fingers and let the bird fly up, circling the irregular outline of her workshop. “They’re a prayer.”

Tristen folded his arms. “I realize,” he said, as jovially as he could manage, “that you have put a great deal of effort and practice into your gnomic utterances, Sister. But I for one would appreciate it if you spoke plainly, just this once.”

She straightened in surprise—not quite a recoil, but