Part 4 (2/2)

Vaun came to Neva because he was captured, not of his own will.

'Did he?' It was Miriya's turn to sneer. 'Or per-haps he allowed himself to be caught, knowing full well he would be freed.

Galatea returned to her pict-slate, her attention fading with every moment. 'Oh, this is the theory advanced by the Hospitaller, yes? What is her name? Verana?'

'Sister Verity. corrected Miriya, 'of the Order of Serenity.

'An order not known for its expertise in martial matters. commented Galatea, dryly.

Miriya suppressed a snarl. 'She may not be a Bat-tle Sister, but she has a keen mind and a strong heart.

Her skills could prove useful to us.

'Indeed? Or is it merely that you feel an obliga-tion for letting her sibling perish?'

She looked away. There is some truth in that, I will not deny it. But still I stand by what I have said. I... I trust her. The admission surprised her as much as it did the Canoness.

Galatea shook her head again. 'Be that as it may, Sister Verity has no place here. Her dispensation to visit Neva extended only to the duration of Lethe's funerary service. The Order of Serenity has its works to perform on the outer moons with the sick and the diseased. It is my understanding that the workers there suffer in their service to the Imperium...'

You outrank the Palatine leading the mission on the moons. noted Miriya. ”You would be within your remit to order Verity to linger here, if you wished it.

'If I wished it. repeated Galatea. 'I'm not con-vinced there is any value to having her remain. It's enough that you, a senior Battle Sister, have allowed your emotions to cloud your judgement on this matter. What can I expect of a mere medicae like Verity, a woman unused to the violence and trials that we will be facing?'

The same as any one of us. Miriya said grimly, 'that we embrace the pa.s.sion and do the Emperor's will.

She advanced as close as she could and laid her hands flat upon the Canoness's desk. 'Give me this, Galatea. I will ask you for nothing else, but give me this chance to make amends.

The weight and intensity behind the Sister Supe-rior's words gave her pause, and the two women studied each other for a long moment, measuring each other's resolve. Finally, Galatea broke the stale-mate and gathered up a fresh data-slate and an electro-quill. 'Despite what you may think of me, Miriya, I have always considered you to be an exem-plary warrior. Because of that, and that alone, I'll grant you the freedom to pursue this. She scratched out a line of words, the gla.s.sy plate turning her flowing script into precise letters as she wrote. 'But understand, you have no margin for error. If you do not bring Vaun to book, it will be the end for you - and you will drag the Hospitaller down as well.' The slate gave a soft, melodic chime as the messenger program within came to an end.

Miriya gave a low bow. Thank you, Sister Canoness. I promise you, we will see the witch burn for his transgressions.'

Galatea smiled a crooked smile. 'It is not me that you need to convince, Sister Superior. The esteemed Deacon Lord LaHayn is watching our convent like a hawk. I'm certain he will want to know every detail of how you plan to locate the psyker.'

'I do not understand.'

'You shall. The Blessing of the Wound begins at eight-bell today, and tradition requires that our order be in attendance at the fete of observance in the Lunar Cathedral.' She made a dismissive gesture with her hand.

You will accompany my party. Dress robes and full honours, Sister. Inform your squad.

In the streets, children who were too young to understand the true nature of an adult's penance ran alongside the flagellatory wagons and threw loose cobbles at the moaning, soiled people inside. Drawn down in cattle-shuttles from the penitentiary mines and work camps on the moons, the remorse-ful were brought to Neva by the promise of time deducted from their indentures or sentences, should they survive the great games of the festival. The ones who were already broken in will were of no use; those were kept on the moons to work until they died. Only the men and women who still held a liv-ing spark of inner strength were allowed to sacrificethemselves to the machine of the church in this great annual celebration.

So the priests and clerics in the chapels told it, everyone was remorseful. To be human was to be born that way, already alive only at the sufferance of the Emperor, but hard graft and piety were a good salve, and only the truly low were irredeemable. Criminals and heretics, dissidents and slaves, only they had no voice in the church - and as such, they were the best sacrifices for the Blessing of the Wound. Persistent rumours said that they would be joined by innocents who spoke too loudly about the church's severe rule or the flaccid, ineffectual regime of the planetary governor; the festival was always a good time to rid the city of unmutual thinkers.

On other Imperial worlds, there would be harvest celebrations and burnt offerings, great hymnal con-certs, sometimes fasting or dancing. A million planets and billions of people celebrated the great-ness of the Master of Mankind in their own sanctioned ways, and here, on this world of theolo-gians and rigid dogma, there was no dividing line between zealous penance and devout wors.h.i.+p.

This year Noroc was alive with chatter on the streets and in the pulpits, even among the youths spilling out of the seminaries and schola. The lord deacon had promised the death of a witch to cap the festival's commencement this year, not a make-believe one using fireworks and lightning guns like they'd seen before, but a real live psyker. Now that was not going to come to pa.s.s, and rumours ran about the city like mice in the walls.

The barony and the moneyed castes looked on at the commoners and pretended they knew what was to be done instead, but they were just as ignorant -save for the knowledge that Lord LaHayn and Gov-ernor Emmel would have to collude to create something of equal spectacle to placate the people. All across the metropolis, individuals donned their ritual wear or chose their costumes if they were lucky enough to have received a blood red sum-mons paper. The icon sellers filled their stalls and emptied them, filled and emptied them again, tak-ing in fists of Imperial scrip and church-certified t.i.the beads.

This year, it was the new cotton s.h.i.+rts adorned with a gold-thread aquila that were the must-have item, and the enforcers had already broken up a minor fracas in the linen quarter after stock had sold out. Elsewhere, devotional parades where local girls painted themselves sun-yellow and wore wings, celebrated the pa.s.sing of Celestine. In other districts there were gleeful, impromptu stonings for those whose petty crimes had gone unpunished by the judges. The mood was a strange, potent mix of the buoyant and the fierce, with the l.u.s.t for hard violence hovering just beneath the surface. You could see it in the eyes of the running children, on the faces of their parents, reflected in the fervour of the city's thousands of clerics.

The carriages jumped cables and fell down the gentle incline towards the grandest of Noroc's basil-icas, the lofty pinnacle of the Lunar Cathedral. From a distance, the cathedral resembled a tall cone with geometric scoops cut from its flanks. In fact, these carefully a.s.sembled voids were aligned with the complex orbital paths of Neva's many moons, and during midnight ma.s.s it was often possible for paris.h.i.+oners inside to see the pinp.r.i.c.k lights of fusion furnaces on the surfaces of the distant, black-ened spheres.

Below the church was the oval ring of the amphitheatre from which LaHayn himself some-times held sermons. The ancient power of the great hololithic projectors ringing the edges turned him into a glowing ghost ten storeys tall, the ornate bra.s.s horns of a thousand vox-casters throwing his voice across the city.

For now, the arena was quiet, but that would soon change. Already, the shapes of elaborate scenery flats and large sections of stage set were coming together, casting alien shadows beneath the crackling yellow floodlights that hung from gas balloons. Once the carriages disgorged their cargoes of conscript actors, once the guns were charged and the mesh-weave costumes donned, the great performances of the day would begin in earnest.

Verity's first glimpse of the Lunar Cathedral's great chamber came over the shoulder of Sister Miriya's power armour, the high vault of the white stone ceiling rising away from her. The rock had a peculiar glitter about it where flecks of bright mica were caught in its matrix. Lights seemed to dance and play in the heights, and it was a far cry from the close, introspective feel of the convent. The Hospitaller had never seen so much gold in one place. It was on every surface, worked in lines across the mosaics on the floor, climbing up the columns in coils of High Gothic script, fanning in thick cables like a vast, honeyed web.

The people here were just as gilded as the cathe-dral interior. She pa.s.sed by women with arch expressions and a sense of disdain that seemed so deeply ingrained that it must have been bred into them. Their clothes mimicked the cut of Inquisitor-ial robes or, among the more daring, the garb of living saints. They fanned themselves with tessen, semicircles of thin jade that could double as an edged weapon in a fight.

verity doubted that any of these perfumed n.o.ble ladies would ever do anything so base, though. There were troupes of elaborate servitors hovering about each of them, some peeling grapes, some tast-ing wines fortheir mistresses. Each of the helots was probably armed with all manner of discreet - but lethal - firepower.

She watched the machine-slaves drift to and fro, and observed the way the women edited their servants from their world: they never looked directly at them, never spoke to them. They ignored their very existence, and yet depended entirely upon it.

One of the more audacious of the ladies said something whispered behind her fan and set a clutch of her friends giggling. Verity, the smallest and plainest thing for what must have been kilome-tres around, instantly knew the insult was directed at her.

At her side, the Battle Sister called Ca.s.sandra caught the ripple of spiteful amus.e.m.e.nt and made a show of sniffing, before turning a soldier's eye on the servitors. 'A pa.s.sable combat construct. she noted to no one in particular, 'but I imagine any attacker would be turned back before these slaves could be called to arms.

'How so?' asked Sister Portia.

'Even a s.p.a.ce Marine would find those fragrances an irritant. she replied, her voice low - but not that low.

'I suspect a crop-duster was used to apply them.

Verity couldn't help but s.n.a.t.c.h a look back at the n.o.blewomen, and the pink blushes colouring their faces.

They walked on, the rolling murmur of the fete rising and falling as merchants and theologians made their small talk in drifting shoals of conversa-tion. The Hospitaller kept in line with Miriya and her unit, as Miriya in turn followed the Canoness Galatea and her adjutant Sister Reiko. Verity saw dozens of priests of ranks too numerous to tally, all in various cuts of crimson and white. A very few wore gold and black, and the men in red congre-gated around them, pups before pack leaders. Verity bowed whenever one of them crossed the orbit of the Adepta Sororitas contingent, but she suspected that her presence was not even noticed. She allowed herself to survey the edges of the gathering as they crossed beneath a great silver glow-globe hanging on suspensors in the chancel. There were a few Sis-ters from other orders here, representatives of the Orders Famulous and Dialogous. She shared looks with those women, curt nods that carried a dozen subtle signals.

The mix of the pious and the laity was about even. The cream of Neva's magnate cla.s.s preened in their copious robes, and something of the arrogance of it made verity uncomfortable. This was, after all, a place of the Emperor's wors.h.i.+p, not a ballroom for foppish merchants. The men - they were almost all male - proudly displayed the sigils of their n.o.ble houses on medallions, tabards and tunics. The Hos-pitaller reflected: the last time she had seen many of those symbols, they had been rendered as livid brands burnt into the flesh of indentured workers, or carved across the smoke-belching stacks of man-ufactories, as an undisciplined child might daub their name on a wall.

Their procession stopped with such abruptness that Verity was jolted from her thoughts and almost walked into the back of Sister Isabel. She recovered quickly, frowning at her lack of focus.

It took a moment for Verity to recognise the man that Galatea stood before, a stiff salute in her pose. She had seen his placid, patrician face on billboards out at the port, and on some of the moons, on posters drawn over with rude graffiti.

'Governor Emmel, are you well?' asked the Canoness.

He presented an expression of theatrical sadness. 'As well as can be expected, my dear lady. It has been explained to me that my festival's star attraction will not be appearing. Verity could tell from his tone of voice that Emmel was more distressed about the prospect of throwing a poor festival than he was that Torris Vaun was at large among his people.

The Adepta Sororitas will ensure that your distress will be short-lived,' Galatea replied smoothly. The matter is in hand.'

That seemed to be enough to satisfy the planetary ruler, his gaze already wandering to the perfumed women congregating at the wine fountain. Ah, good. I know I can place my trust in the Daughters of the Emperor...'

From the edge of her vision came a cl.u.s.ter of other aristocrats, buoyed up on drink and sweet tabac smoke.

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