Part 3 (1/2)

He would never have even dared to stay in the same room with them had they been Battle Sisters, but the Adepta Sororitas had many faces to it, and these three were just nurses. Sister Hospitallers, they called them-selves. The pilot amused himself thinking of how he might like them to comfort him in bed one night.

As if she smelled the notion in his brain, the tall woman broke away and came over to him. 'Could you give us a few moments, please? In private.'

'Uh, well. He stalled. The thing is, you said this would be quick. I've got a perishable load waiting on the dock up at the commerce station, bound for the epicurias in Metis City.' The pilot gave a vague wave in the direction of the ocean.

'I can't spare the time.' 'No. said the woman firmly, 'you can. And you will. I am a servant of the Divine Imperial Church.

Do you know what that means?' That... I have to... do what you say?' Tm glad we understand each other. She turned her back on him and returned to her Sisters, who were walking out on to the starport ap.r.o.n.

'Are you sure you don't want Sister Zoe or me to go with you? You do not have to bear this sorrow alone, Verity.

The girl swallowed hard, watching the first rays of sunlight cresting the mountains in the distance. She could smell the salt of the sea in the cool air. 'Inara, no. You have already done enough. Verity forced a weak smile. This is somethingthat I must attend to myself. It is a matter of family.

'We are all family. Zoe said gently. All Sisters by duty if not by blood.

Verily shook her head. 'I thank you both for accom-panying me, but our order's work on the outer moons is more important. The Palatine might bear to lose me for a time, but not you two as well. She took up her bag from Zoe and gave them both a curt bow. Ave Imperator, Sisters. With finality, the Hospitaller with-drew a black mourning shawl from her pocket and tied it about her neck.

Inara said her farewell with a light touch on her arm. 'We will pray for her. she promised, 'and for you.

Ave Imperator. said Zoe, as the hatch began to rise up again.

Verity made her way down from the landing pad, turning back just once to see the cargo shuttle throw itself up into the lightening sky on plumes of dirty smoke. She brushed dirt from the ruby hem of her robes and set off across the port, a fistful of papers and consent seals in her hand.

She found a stand of cable-carriages outside the port proper, where the hooded drivers congregated in dusters under clouds of tabac smoke. Verity had Imperial scrip with which to pay, but none of them would even meet her gaze. Instead, the driver at the head of the group pulled a mesh veil down over his eyes and beckoned her towards his vehicle. With a rattle of gears, he worked the lever on the carriage's open c.o.c.kpit and the boxy vehicle moved off along the wide, curved boulevard.

Trenches set into the surface of the roadway criss-crossed every major artery in the city, through which lines of cable rolled on endless loops. The carriages had spiked cogs in their wheel wells that bit into the cables and locked, allowing the vehicles to move about with no power source of their own. It kept the city's air clean of combustion fumes and engine noise, replacing it with the constant hiss and clatter of cabs jumping slots and pa.s.sing over points. The metal landaus that travelled Noroc's streets varied in size from small taxis to large flatbed haulers and triple-decker omnibuses. Only the wealthy and the church had their own.

Verity understood from her indoctrination a.s.sem-blies that Neva's laws forbade everyone but the agents of the Emperor himself - and by that they meant the Arbites, Imperial Guard and Ecclesiarchy - the use of a vehicle with any true freedom of movement.

She had never been on Neva Prime before. In all the months that the Order of Serenity had been in service to the poor and wretched of the outer moons, Verity had never once come to the world those innocents served. The moons were desolate places, each and every one of them. Whole plane-toids given over to open cast mines or deep-bore geothermal power taps, riven with sickness from the polluting industry that controlled them. It was no wonder that Neva itself was such a jewel of a world, she reflected, when every iota of its effluent and engineering had been transplanted to the satellite globes about it.

She caught reflections of her face in the win-dows of shops as they trundled through the vendor district.

Her flawless skin and amber hair did nothing to hide the distance in her eyes; what beauty she had was ruined by the sadness lurking there. Stallholders were already erecting their pitches, piling high stacks of fat votive candles, cloth penitent hoods, paper offerings and icons cast out of resin. Once or twice there was the crack of a whip on the wind, but that might have just been the cables. The cable-carriage clanked past a flatbed piled high with what seemed to be hessian corpse sacks, there and then. gone. At an inter-change, a train of teenagers, ashen, shaven-headed and s.e.xless, were led across the avenue by priests in bright regalia. Then the cab was moving again, the driver plucking at the wires in the road to steer it.

Verity sighed, and it felt like knives in her chest. Gloom crowded her. She was hollow and echoing within, as if everything that had made her who she was had been scooped out and destroyed. Once again, tears p.r.i.c.kled at her eyes and she gasped, trying to hold them back and failing.

Through the gauzy muslin curtains across the car-riage she saw the Convent of Saint Katherine emerging in the distance, and presently the woman surrendered herself to the grief that churned within her, m.u.f.fling her sobs in the folds of her black shawl.

They buried Sister Lethe in the memorial garden, a s.p.a.ce of light and greenery on the southern face of the convent. It grew out of the side of the building in a flat disc-shaped terrace, emerging from the wide portal doors of the chapel. The garden was domi-nated by a statue of Saint Katherine, dressed in the armour of a Sister Seraphim. She stood as if ready to leap off her plinth and take to the air, carved coils of flame and smoke licking from the jump pack on her back.

In keeping with her new status and penances, Iona was not permitted to attend the funeral. Instead, Ca.s.sandra walked ahead of the pallbearer helots in their white robes, a censer of votive oils burning as she swung it back and forth like a pen-dulum. Miriya, Isabel and Portia followed the cloaked body, their black Celestian armour pol-ished to a mirror-bright sheen. In accordance with the rites of the order, cloths of redsilk were tied across the barrels of their guns to signify the silence of the weapons in this moment of reflection.

Reiko, the veteran Sister Superior who served Canoness Galatea as her aide, conducted the cere-mony in a correct but not heartfelt manner. A scattering of other Battle Sisters, women that Miriya did not know by sight - most likely members of the Convent's garrison - paid their respects as they were wont to do. Yet, not one of them had known Lethe, none of them had fought alongside her against trai-tors and xenos, none of them had bled red for the same patches of accursed ground.

Miriya grimaced. She had lost women under her command before, in circ.u.mstances much worse than this one, and yet the simple and utterly brutal manner of Lethe's murder weighed her down with guilt. It was all the Sister Superior could do to hold back the tirade of inner voices that would willingly blame her for her error aboard the Mercutio.

In her mind's eye she saw herself again, in that moment when she placed the plasma pistol against Vaun's capsule and threatened to kill him. Why didn't I do it? Then Lethe would still be alive, Iona would still be one of us... But to do so would have been to disobey a direct command from her church. Miriya had often been called to account for her fre-quently 'creative' interpretations of instructions from her seniors, but she had never defied a supe-rior; such an idea was anathema to a Sororitas. Her gaze dropped to the stone path beneath her feet. Sis-ter Dione had warned her not be complacent, and she had not fully heeded that warning until it was too late. . will make those responsible pay, she vowed.

An oval slot in the stony path of the garden was open to the air, revealing a vertical silo a few metres deep.

Reiko brought the Litany of Remembrance to a close, and the white-clad servitors tipped Lethe's body into the s.p.a.ce and filled it with earth. As the Nevans did with all their dead, they buried her standing up with her face tilted back toward the sky. It was for the deceased to see the way back to Terra, and to the path that led them to the right hand of the Emperor, so their clerics said.

'In His name, and by the sanction of Our Mar-tyred Lady, we commit our Sister Lethe Catena to the earth.

There to rest until the Divine One calls upon His fallen to rise once more.' Reiko bowed her head, and the others did the same. Miriya hesitated for a second, catching the eye of a young Sister wear-ing the robes of a different order. She gave the Celestian a look loaded with pain and anger.

'Praise the Emperor, for in our resolve we only reflect His purpose of will,' intoned Reiko. 'So shall it be.' 'So shall it be,' they chorused.

Drawn inexorably to the place where Lethe lay, Miriya approached the woman kneeling there even though part of her knew only ill could come of it. Closer, and she recognised the unbroken circle sym-bol on the girl's robes, the mark of the Order of Serenity. Like the Order of our Martyred Lady, the Sister Hospitallers who served in the name of Seren-ity came from the Convent Sanctorum on Ophelia VII. Hospitaller orders were, by Imperial law, non-militant, but that by no means meant their ranks were filled with weaklings.

These women were chirurgeons and nurses of expert skill and great compa.s.sion, serving the warriors of the Imperial military machine on countless thousands of worlds.

They were also full trained in the arts martial, and were fully able to take action if circ.u.mstances demanded it. No planet that dared to consider itself civilised was without a hospice or valetudinarium staffed by such Sisters.

The woman stood and met Miriya's gaze. She seemed on the verge of tears, but her hands were balled into fists. 'You... You are Lethe's commander. Sister Miriya.'

'I had that honour. Miriya replied carefully.

The words seemed to pain the girl. . Let her die.'

'Lethe ended her life as she lived it, in battle against the heretic and the witchkin.' Miriya replied, taken aback by the young woman's grief.

'I want to know how it happened,' snapped the Hospitaller. You must tell me.'

Miriya gave a slow shake of the head. That is a mat-ter for the Orders Militant, not for you.'

You have no right to keep it from me. Tears streaked the woman's face. 'I am her sister!'

Miriya's gesture took in the whole of the convent. *We are all her Sisters.

The Hospitaller pulled at her collar and tugged out a length of intricate silver chain: a rosary, the like of which Miriya had only ever seen worn by one other person. 'Where did you get that?'

'I am Sister verity Catena of the Order of Serenity. said the girl. 'Sibling to Sister Lethe of the Order of our Martyred Lady, orphan of the same mother. She grabbed Miriya's wrist. 'Now you will tell me how my only blood kin was killed, or by the Golden Throne I'll claw it from you!'

She saw it instantly: the same curve of the nose, the eyes and the determination burning behind them. The moment stretched taut in the silence, Verity's anger breaking against the cold dejection that cloaked Miriya.'Very well. said the Celestian, after a long silence. 'Sit with me, Sister Verity, and I will tell you the hard and unforgiving truth.

The skinny youth rolled the lit candle between his fingers, playing with the soft tallow, tipping it so the rivulets of molten wax made coiled tracks around its length.

'Nervous?' asked Rink, balancing on the edge of the table.

Ignis glanced up at the other man. 'Are you ask-ing me or telling me?' Rink hadn't been able to sit still for five minutes since they arrived in the saloon, and even now in this secluded back room, he was constantly in motion. As if to ill.u.s.trate the point, Rink fingered the tin cup of recaf on the table and licked his lips.

'I'm not nervous. The large guy said it with such bland innocence that it made Ignis smirk. 'I just... don't like this place.

'You'll get no argument from me. said the youth, teasing the flame along the candle's wick. He shook his head. 'Ach. I can't believe we're even here.

'My point. retorted Rink, putting the cup down again. 'Maybe we should just give this up as a bad job and-'