Divination - John French Page 10

  [question redacted]

  ‘Yes, that was when the last two of Sonnus’ guards moved. Their robes tore off as they moved. They were just a blur. Claws and limbs and shining shells like polished bone. The figures in black… the Angels – that’s what they were, weren’t they? The Emperor’s Angels of Death – charged. And Sonnus reached out his hand and there was lightning on his fingers and he, he…’

  [question redacted]

  ‘I don’t know. The doors just unlocked and there were people from the household, people I knew or thought I knew, with violet light in their eyes and guns in their hands. The Angels did not stop. I saw one of them reach Sonnus and put a sword through his chest and lift him up like a roasting carcass on a spit. He… I…’

  [question redacted]

  ‘I don’t remember. Someone fired grenades into the room and suddenly I couldn’t see or breathe. There were just the flashes and roars through the fog and the shadows of the Angels.’

  [question redacted]

  ‘Yes, I think Mistress Morio was alive when I last saw her.’

  [statement redacted]

  ‘What is going to happen to me? I want to go home. Please can you tell me when I can go home?’

  Interrogation transcript complete.

  Hed-Sut was transferred to penal colony Stygos-VI as an acknowledgement of his freedom from taint.

 

 

  Operational summary report from Cytos Purge Stages I-VI

  Geresh orbital and void facility targets – Cleansed by five companies of Suraso mercenaries. Three target clusters eliminated on Geresh surface by Dominicus Prime Death Clans.

  Ero system – Void macro storage complex, purged by three companies of von Castellan Household voidsmen.

  Mithras – Strike by Deathwatch Kill Company. All details redacted.

  Asoro – Manse of the House Morio destroyed by macro orbital strike. Zero warning given to maximise casualties. Sweep of debris completed by Arbitrator Execution Unit.

  Kias – Cleanse carried out by Throne Agent Cadre under Sensus-54-Zeta.

  Dust Scorn – Assassination of six target clusters by Inx Blade Cult devotees.

  Geo-1 – Assault on Geo Combine harvest machines by the 45th Plethian Dragoons. Total cleanse ratified after seven days of fighting by use of a Primaris Telepathica Cadre.

  Trade ship Tide Bringer – Destroyed off Ero dockyards by direct fire from the warships Last Oath and Scion of Wrath.

  Carthos – All Cytos Cartel members killed in the detonation of plasma generators on Orbital Dock 56-A.

  Trade ship Journey of Wonder – Boarded and taken and scuppered by the rogue trader Dionysia under the command of Duke Cleander von Castellan.

 

 

  From: Cressida Syr Morio, Executor of the House Morio

  To: Viola von Castellan

  I have nothing. I am a beggar in a universe that does not suffer the weak and where the light of mercy does not lighten the dark. I am alive and for that I suppose I must thank you. I am told that this ship will take me to Bakka, and from there…

  Osric is gone. They say that he betrayed me, that he was working with the Cytos from even before the storms came, that he resented me and wanted to take control from me. It is a lie. I will not believe it.

  Everything is gone. Even my House’s name will mean nothing. That fat priest friend of yours said I am to be a pilgrim – a pilgrim on a journey that may never end to see the light of Sol and the glory of Holy Terra; a journey of penance that I will die on. That is what I get? That is what I deserve?

  My mother always said that the von Castellans had cold silver in their veins, and you… you, Viola, are a true scion of your noble line. Did you destroy the Cytos just so that you could do this to me?

  You always were a jealous, bitter thing. Don’t deny it. Even when we were children you could not bear it that your sister would inherit, that your brother had freedom, that our tutors liked me more, that you would always be in someone’s shadow. You just could not bear it when I rose out of the pit that your family made for its loathed lesser cousins.

  Do you know what kept me going all those years of watching you twist into the shape your parents wanted? Knowing that I was better than you all. And I still am, Viola, I still am. You have sent me into an exile of rags. You have your victory, Mistress of Threads. But I will remember what you did and what you are.

  Cressida Syr Morio

 

 

  From: Viola von Castellan

  To: Cressida Syr Morio, Executor of the House Morio

  Cressida,

  You say you have nothing, so let me give you the coin whose value never fades. The truth is that I never resented you – I pitied you. I pitied you when we were children, and I pity you now. In all honesty nothing that I have done since I received your first message was driven by anything other than my duty to the Imperium. You see, I am a penitent, too. I live a penance for the mistakes of my family and the sins of my brother.

  Cleander, like you, wants to believe that I have taken revenge on you for your washing your hands of us after our family’s fall. He wants nothing more than for your current situation to be the result of my careful design, for it to be just and fitting that you find yourself alone and without friends just as you left us alone and without help. He very much wants to believe that. But the truth is that I don’t care enough to make that happen, and while I am many things I am not cruel for my own ends.

  You are a bitter and foolish soul, Cressida. You believe your desires and power define the universe. I know that belief is false. I know that my desires and designs are nothing in the play of time and the span of the stars.

  Could I have helped you to start again, set you up with wealth and the hope of the prestige you so crave? Yes, I could. But, as I said, I am not cruel without reason.

  Walk the path given to you, cousin, and maybe one day you shall see the light of Terra and know that I have given you a freedom and peace that I cannot give myself.

  Yours in blood and truth,

  Viola von Castellan

 

  Operational records relating to the Cytos Purge end here.

  No further correspondence between Cressida Syr Morio and Viola von Castellan exists in the von Castellan dynastic record.

  THE CIRCLE OF THE SWORD

  ‘The soul is a tower that must stand against the might of the seas of fate and the storms of impiety.’

  – Sebastian Thor, words spoken on the road to Terra

  ‘You do not deserve the absolution of execution…’

  ‘You have sinned and you don’t even have the strength to face your own impiety…’

  ‘You are sister to us no more…’

  Severita shut the door of the training chapel. She closed her eyes for a second, her hands lingering on the cold metal of the lock. Under her fingers she felt the thrum of the Dionysia’s engines pushing the ship through the void. The old voices lingered in her mind for a moment. She felt the snap of the lash in memory, and her shoulders flexed under her bodyglove. She opened her eyes and turned.

  Darkness. The sound of the ship was a distant pulse held back beyond the walls. Her hands found the candles by habit and touch, and she struck the flame to the first of them.

  ‘Most holy Emperor, illuminate this soul with your wisdom.’ The flame held steady, growing to a narrow blade of light. She watched it, letting the glow fill her eyes.

  ‘You have shamed us, sister…’

  She spoke a different line of devotion as she lit each of the other candles and placed them in their niches around the training chapel. Shadows pooled in the faces of saints and light reflected from the gilded halos of painted icons. The skull etched into the central floor caught the light and gleamed, a ghostl
y pattern on worn iron. The room had been a cargo space, but the von Castellans had given it to her, and she had worked long hours on every detail. Her hands had been bloody once she had ground the rust from every rivet and panel. She had cast the candle stands in the ship’s forge and marked the symbols of devotion on the floor with the tip of a broken sword. Once it was done, Preacher Josef had consecrated it to service and blessed it for its purpose.

  Only she came here now, but it was not hers; it belonged to the living god she served and had failed.

  Slowly she walked from the last candle to the centre of the pattern on the floor. Her feet were bare. The metal was cold beneath her tread. The painted eyes of saints looked down on her as she stopped at the centre of the haloed skull. She could feel the sheathed sword at her back. The candlelight lingered in her sight after she closed her eyes. She began to gather breath into her lungs, and one muscle at a time she released the tension in her neck, then her shoulders, then the flesh that wrapped the muscles of her arms, working through her body fibre by fibre, calming, stilling by will, letting the darkness and silence drown her.

  ‘You are one of us no longer. You are false. You are unclean.’

  The cold voice rang with anger in her head. Carefully, she breathed in, reached over her shoulder, and grasped the hilt of the sword on her back.

  Love the Emperor…

  The first words of the silent prayer rose in the dark behind her eyelids.

  …for He is the salvation of mankind.

  The sword slid from its sheath and the breath exhaled from her lips, and she began.

  PUPIL

  ‘They say you are to be Seraphim.’ The crone lowered the clay cup from her lips and raised a hand to wipe the milk running down her chin. Fog puffed into the air as she coughed.

  Severita stayed still. The wind pushed cold into her flesh and stirred the fabric of her smock. The sky above the crag still gleamed with stars. The dew on the stones had turned to frost. The flames rippled and snapped in the bowls of burning oil mounted on tall iron stands around the open-air training shrine.

  ‘I have been told to submit to training, sister superior.’

  The crone took another slurp of milk. Droplets pattered to the frost-covered stone. ‘Submit… Is that what you are going to do, sister?’ The crone turned a time-yellowed eye on Severita, and the edge of her mouth twitched. Her face looked like crumpled leather and her back was twisted beneath the deep crimson of her robes. ‘Well, are you going to answer?’ she asked, after a long moment in which Severita remained silent. ‘I hear you are good, ferocious and unbending, just as the Emperor demands of his daughters.’

  ‘I do my duty, sister superior.’

  ‘Just sister,’ said the crone. ‘There is no superior here.’

  ‘But you–’

  ‘That was a long time ago. The Emperor did not require my death in battle so here I am, an old woman of blades.’

  The crone looked at Severita for a long moment and then turned, put the cup down on the low stone wall at the edge of the shrine space, and lifted a thin bundle wrapped in red rags. She held it for a moment and then tossed it to Severita.

  The movement was so quick and without ceremony that Severita almost dropped the bundle as she caught it. She held it for a second, suddenly uncertain.

  ‘Go on – unwrap it,’ said the crone.

  Severita held still for a second. The weight in the bundle was familiar, but also not.

  ‘I have read your litany of battle. You are not a novice, sister, an old sword in a shroud should hold no terror for you.’

  Severita unwound the cloth. Even with the cold wind, the scent of incense filled her nose. She stopped suddenly and stared.

  ‘What is it you see, my child?’ asked the crone.

  A sword. Worn bone and wood set in its haft, its pommel a ball of iron, words spiralling in gold around the cold sphere, the crossguard two short wings of gilded adamantine, a leather-wound scabbard hiding the blade. It was as long as her arm, and narrow.

  ‘It is one of the Blades of Illumination,’ she breathed, ‘a relic of the War of a Hundred Worlds.’

  ‘Yes, it is, but before you get lost in reverence, answer the question – what is it?’

  ‘I…’ Severita felt the frown form on her face. The crone stepped forwards, gripped the hilt and drew the blade so fast that Severita’s eyes barely caught the flash of starlight on its razor edge. The point of the blade was against her neck before a word formed on her tongue.

  ‘What,’ said the crone, the words cold and measured, ‘is it?’

  Severita could feel the sharp point on her skin.

  ‘It’s a sword.’

  The crone smiled and lowered the blade.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Never let anything blind you to that simple truth. For all the martyrs that have held this blade, and all the heretics that have died by its point or edge, its history matters less than its nature.’ The crone paused, reversed the blade with a twist of her hand and held it out, pommel first, to Severita. ‘Here, take it.’

  Severita reached out and gripped the haft, and felt the wood and bone of its grip settle against her skin. The flame-light and starlight caught the ripples in the blade’s steel. Fine power field conductors ran down its fuller like the paths of silver tears.

  ‘Our sisters in the Order of the Valorous Heart favour heavier blades in the style of the Stygies battle forges – powerful, with enough weight and power to cleave clean through flesh and bone without the field active. Truly fearsome with a fire of faith driving every cut.’

  The crone turned and picked up a second bundle. Another sword lay within the fabric, twice the length of the one in Severita’s hand. The crone winced as she lifted it, skeletal hands gripping the long hilt.

  ‘Looks like righteous might given form, doesn’t it?’ said the crone, and grinned, the expression knotting the creases of her face. Severita was about to reply when the crone twisted, and the great sword in her hands spun around to stop a hair’s breadth from Severita’s own as she raised it to parry. The old sister was not smiling now.

  ‘A blow like that and even a sword in your hand won’t stop it,’ said the crone, her eyes boring into Severita’s. She turned away and hobbled back to her clay cup of milk. ‘They said you were pure, and deadly, and clever, which is why you are here. Tell me that they haven’t taken advantage of my old age to sell me tin as silver.’

  ‘I know the skill of the sword, sister,’ said Severita. Behind the layers of will and control she could feel anger begin to glow. ‘If I am not worthy to be Seraphim then that is as the God Emperor wills it.’

  ‘Worthy?’ snarled the crone, milk spraying from her lips. ‘Worthy? You have faced enemies in battle, you have sent them to the flames, you have been tested and trained and never broken or failed – of course you are worthy. The question is if you are more than that.’ The crone’s hand flashed out and her finger struck the blade of the sword in Severita’s hand. A sharp note rang into the air. ‘Why did you parry directly? You knew it would not work, you know this blade is too light for such a counter.’

  Severita opened her mouth, but the crone stepped closer, her breath touching the skin of Severita’s face as she spoke.

  ‘You need more than faith to be a true weapon of the Emperor. You think too much of worthiness, and so you don’t see the simple truth that you need to learn here and now.’ The crone’s finger set the blade Severita held ringing again. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It is a sword,’ said Severita, saying the only word that came into her head.

  The crone nodded.

  ‘But what is its nature, sister?’

  ‘It is light, balanced, sharp-tipped and edged, it is quick…’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Yes? Go on.’

  ‘It is like a storm held still.’

  The
crone stepped back, nodding. ‘Better, but not all the way there. Good enough for now, good enough for us to start with. The point is that you understand the nature of the sword. And understanding takes a lifetime.’ She barked a snatch of laughter then. ‘Too bad that few of us will live to find it.’

  The crone hobbled back to the edge of the space, sheathed the great sword and drew another that was similar in form to the blade Severita held.

  ‘Out of the way,’ said the old woman as she turned, motioning Severita aside with her blade and limping into the centre of the space. ‘We will begin with the First Devotion of the Tenth Blade. It is the truth and prayer of all who learn the higher arts of the sword in our order, so pay attention.’ Severita thought she might have seen the crone’s mouth twitch in a smile before she let out a breath and raised the sword in front of her so that it was almost touching her forehead. For a second the old woman seemed taller, her back straighter, and the wrinkles of age that lay upon her skin like the patina of old iron faded.

  ‘Obey His words…’ she said aloud as though continuing a prayer begun in the silence of her mind, and then she was stepping and turning and the sword flashed under the stars. ‘For He will lead you into the light of the future…’

  MARTYR

  ‘Heed His wisdom,’ whispered Severita to herself as the rain began to fall. The belly of the storm cloud coming up the valley glowed red as the new day’s light snagged on the dark bulges. Drops began to patter across the stones of the pilgrim road that snaked up the valley to her feet. She could smell the lightning charge on the air and the tang of iron in the droplets as they exploded off her armour. ‘For He will protect you from evil…’

  ‘It’s come up from the south,’ said Clementia, from where she had come to stand beside Severita. ‘The fire winds pulled the ashes of the cities up into the air. That’s the grave dust of ten million souls falling in the water of this rain.’