Chill by Elizabeth Bear

on the other side of the door. Gavin aimed his gaze high and unsealed his eyes. The light sprang forth, cutting-bright, and metal sizzled where it fell. It would be safest to burn through the shatterbolts and the welds; the door should swing on its hinges, then. And if it failed to swing, he could burn through the hinges, too.
    It was a heavy door—and heavily armored—and the burning took time. By the scorch marks around the perimeter, Mallory and Gavin were not the first to try,but whoever had come before them had been devoid of the assistance of a basilisk.
    The last shatterbolt failed with a crack like one of those tree limbs untwisting, and the door sagged. Gavin backwinged, hopping away from the area where it might fall if the hinges snapped. But other than an unnerving creak, there was nothing.
    “Ready,” Mallory said. The necromancer had assumed a defensive, nonthreatening posture—relaxed but balanced, hands held low. Gavin extended one wing, hair-fine tendrils gliding from the feathertips, and from a distance of four meters hooked the edge of the door and levered it open. The hinges were not so damaged that it dragged against the floor, which was good, because while Gavin had the strength to support it, the mass was another question.
    He had been half expecting the charge and so was ready for it when it came. Three running footsteps warned them before a stout green-coated person barreled through the door, waving a sizzling, quarter-meter mono-knife like a child slashing at stick-swords. That tool would sever even Gavin’s wings, and as he stretched them into filamentous nets and flipped them around the released attacker, he was careful to avoid the edge. Fortunately, the lunging individual had been a Mean until recently, and sie had not yet made sense of hir new body. The nets enmeshed hir, tangled hir wrists and forearms, bound hir hands tight against the hilt of the knife, and slowly dragged them down, however sie might strain.
    Muscle and bone were no match for Gavin’s strength. Before Mallory stepped forward, he had the prisoner pressed against the wall, bracing himself with stiff filaments to prevent hir from simply dragging or shovinghim. Sie outmassed him exponentially, but when he could wedge himself, leverage won.
    Deftly, Mallory moved forward and relieved the prisoner of hir weapon. As the necromancer stroked the control in the blade’s hilt, the sizzle of air against the blade abated. Mallory tucked it through a clothing loop and sighed, pressing fingers to forehead as if in pain.
    Mallory said, “Who are you?”
    The servant, or former servant—by the cluster on hir collar, a chief of household—squared hir shoulders. Hir eventual words confirmed Gavin’s deduction. “I am Head.”
    Hir jaw quivered when sie spoke, as if in naming hirself sie were struck by the weight of implications that the name no longer carried. “You might kill me now, if that’s your intending. I won’t serve Lady Ariane. But spare the others. They only did as I ordered. I am responsible. The treason is mine.”
    “Ariane is dead,” Mallory said.
    Gavin watched the emotions contort Head’s expression: relief, disbelief, apprehension. Fingers shaking, sie reached to hir collar, touched the cluster there, moved as if to uncatch it, then hesitated. “Then who is Commodore?”
    “There is no Commodore,” Mallory said. “Perceval Conn is Captain.”
    Head’s eyes closed. “She escaped.” Then opened, intent and worried. “Rien?”
    Gavin did not envy Mallory the moment of thought before the hesitant headshake that followed. Nor did he envy Head the moment of anticipation, the potential for hope.
    “I’m sorry,” Mallory said. “She saved the world. Not that that makes it better.” Head’s body jerked sharply, as if with an arrestedshudder, but sie made no sound. Someone’s eyes appeared briefly around the rim of the broken door, fingers enfolding the edge. Whoever they belonged to, they vanished back