Grail - By Elizabeth Bear Page 0,68

of the transgendered … which was, to be true, mostly derived from popular period music, a notoriously unnuanced and melodramatic means of understanding any given social phenomenon. Danilaw was willing to bet many a C19 romance had ended with neither party shot down dead, but you’d never tell that from the pop songs.

“Thank you,” Danilaw said, to fill the silence. “You have been accommodating. I realize that many of our requests might seem outlandish—”

“You seem reasonably cautious,” Perceval said. “Never fear. We will not judge you based on our deep martial culture.”

Her lips were quirking. Danilaw decided he was being teased. “Do you have a deep martial culture?” He couldn’t help a sideways glance at the First Mate in his Galahad armor, the black sword on his hip.

Captain Perceval turned and regarded him. When he blushed, Danilaw realized, his whole face flushed as blue as a startled dodecapus. “Well, Tristen Tiger,” she said, while Mallory returned with the requested bench, “are you a deep martial culture, Uncle?”

That explained the relationship. Danilaw had wondered if they were lovers—an alien elf-queen and her consort.

First Mate Tristen glanced down. Danilaw watched the flush quell itself in his cheeks as quickly as it had risen. “Once upon a time,” he said, with no apparent irony, “I was for any war I could get. But I got old.”

When he looked up, his transparent eyes were like the first black ice of winter—thin and perilous. Danilaw believed that Captain Perceval had shown him that on purpose, and he made a note. They will fight if they feel they have to.

Very well. So would his folk.

Mallory set the bench up, pausing to laugh behind a hand. “Tristen Tiger,” the librarian, or necromancer, said. “And yet you have always been such a pussycat to me.”

This time the blush was controlled more quickly, but Danilaw saw the daggery look the First Mate shot the necromancer—or librarian. So this was a sport with them, baiting the albino. And if the First Mate was not the Captain’s consort, Danilaw would lay pretty good odds that he had some sort of romantic relationship with the necromancer.

Danilaw seated himself with thanks, ignoring the uncomfortable pressure of his posterior anatomy against the inside of his pressure suit. Captain Amanda sat down beside him.

“We are,” Perceval said, “apparently something of a failure on the martial glory front. Rest assured, we do not require posturing and childish proofs of your moral fortitude. We merely wish to arrive—Oh!”

In his pressure suit, Danilaw did not feel the shock wave, but he saw the results: the trees knocked into sharp bends, as if by a strong wind; the crack of shattering branches and a few boles. The First Mate’s pressure suit writhed about him like a living thing, extruding gauntlets and a helm as he dove after the Captain. She hadn’t quite been knocked tumbling, as Danilaw would have expected, but she did stagger before the force of the blow until her First Mate steadied her. Mallory went down on one knee and both hands, fingers curling into the dirt as if to cling to the world by main strength.

The angel’s leaf-litter-and-straw outline guttered like a breath-whipped candle flame.

Beside Danilaw, Captain Amanda grabbed his upper arm and latched onto a neighboring citrus tree with her other hand, head ducked as if she anticipated the shock wave might be followed by a massive decompression. Danilaw braced for the same.

But there was nothing. A great stillness followed, making him realize how loud with birds and rustling this orchard library had been. The silence was broken first by Tristen saying “Is anyone badly hurt?” and then by the noises of Captain Perceval pushing his armored body off hers.

“Not here,” Mallory said with a faraway expression. “The library is structurally undamaged.”

“Engine and Rule are fine,” Perceval said, her face crossed by a similar expression. They were checking intra-cerebral data links, Danilaw understood, and spared a shudder for how thoroughly these creatures had compromised themselves before the gods of self-modification. “There was an explosion—Oh.”

She turned her head and tilted it from side to side, examining Danilaw and Amanda. “Suicide bombing? I would not like to think it of you—”

“I beg your pardon.” Amanda released Danilaw’s arm and stepped forward, squaring her shoulders. “My people do not engage in acts of terrorism.”

“I see,” the First Mate said. “Then you will be as surprised as I was to learn that your ship has exploded.”

15

learn to praise the imperfect world

The trees grew naked by the way

And from