Divination - John French Read online

  Severita did not reply but watched as a fork of lightning stabbed down at the cairns on the lower hills. The shrine had stood here in the highlands of Quess for thousands of years. A girl had fled the slaughter of the devout during the Age of Redemption, before the War of a Hundred Worlds. She had found shelter in a cave and escaped the heretics hunting her. Fifty years later that girl had been declared Saint Aspira after a life of waging war against the forces of heresy. A shrine had been raised above the cave and had stood for the millennia that had passed since – a grey clutch of buildings on a bleak hillside at the end of a worn road of stone that led nowhere else. As the Archenemy flooded the southern plains, the Pontif General had commanded that Saint Aspira’s Refuge endure untouched at all cost.

  ‘Are we ready?’ Severita asked after a moment, her gaze steady on the oncoming storm.

  ‘Yes, seraphim superior,’ said Clementia. ‘Our sisters are positioned, they are shriven and are speaking the prayers of fury.’

  Severita blinked as the rain fell and in her mind she saw a small girl clinging to the arms of her nurse as three figures in black robes looked down at her with cold eyes as she screamed at them.

  ‘No, I won’t go! Where is father? I won’t go!’

  ‘Your father and mother are dead,’ said a man with twin augmetic eyes and silver hands. ‘And you have no choice.’

  ‘And the faithful?’ she asked. Clementia paused and looked around at Severita. There was a note of surprise when she spoke.

  ‘They are gathered before the shrine.’

  ‘The walls will not shelter them.’

  ‘They have been led in prayers. If they remain true they will be protected.’

  Three hundred people had reached Saint Aspira’s Refuge before Severita and her sisters had arrived. All had lived in the shadow of these hills, and all had grown up knowing that a prayer to the Emperor in the name of Saint Aspira was their truest shield against those who would do them harm. Now they had come to shelter from enemies as the young saint had, the young clutching the old, the desperate driven by the hope offered by old stories and the promise of prayers. But Severita and her sisters were not there to answer those prayers. They were here to hold to the last and see the shrine stand.

  ‘You have no choice…’ rasped the man with silver hands in Severita’s memory. That was her last memory before she had gone to the schola progenium and to the life of service that would follow. It was as though everything before that point had fallen into oblivion, leaving just that single moment of transition as a stump of a severed life. She could not remember who her parents had been or how they had served the Emperor, and she did not know how they had died. There was just that moment of pain and terror and pleading and then everything that came after. Except now, under the rain, something within her moved and she felt a fire rise.

  ‘Do you follow my command, sister?’ asked Severita, turning to look at Clementia.

  The battle sister bowed her head. The rain was falling more heavily now. Down on the edge of the storm’s shadow, Severita could see the glow of promethium torches.

  ‘By His will, I am His weapon for you to wield. What is your command, sister superior?’

  A blink of lightning struck the road a hundred metres from them. Severita did not move. The rain was a deluge now. Grey drops ran down the crimson of her armour.

  SINNER

  ‘Make her stand.’

  The voice spat the words, and Severita bit down on the pain as the chains yanked her to her feet.

  Whisper His prayers with devotion…

  She tried to make her legs take her weight but they slipped on the slick stone. The rings around her wrist bit, and the chains linked to the pulleys in the roof snapped taut. She made no sound but could not help blood spilling from her lips to spatter on the floor.

  …for they will save your soul…

  The chains clinked as she tried to find strength and balance. The sound of armoured boots on stone rose in her ears until she could see that a figure stood directly in front of her. The pain rose in a wave and she fought it as the sensation tried to tumble down into the relief of unconsciousness.

  ‘She is exceptionally controlled and very tough,’ came a voice from out of sight. ‘Remarkable, in fact.’

  ‘The strength of a sinner only makes their sins less forgivable,’ said the figure in front of Severita. The words were not hurried, not edged with anger – just cold and clear and certain. ‘Look at me, sister.’

  Severita tried to raise her head. The battered and torn muscles in her neck and shoulders tensed. Her face began to lift.

  A hand gripped her chin. The fingers were wrapped in black velvet and skinned in red iron. They lifted Severita’s chin. Pain exploded through her. The chains rattled as she shook.

  Canoness Orn looked into Severita’s eyes. Prayer marks dotted Orn’s cheeks between the scar tissue. Age lines clustered around eyes that were the grey of rain clouds and ash.

  ‘This is not punishment,’ said Orn. ‘That shall come later. It is not even judgement. It is preparation, you understand? We cannot forgive, sister. We cannot even save your soul, but we will do what we can so that you may save it yourself.’

  ‘I…’ Severita gasped the word and felt it shake on her tongue. ‘I am… guilty. I–’

  ‘Your guilt is not the matter at hand, sister. And though your confession speaks to a willingness to repent, it cannot command absolution.’

  Orn removed her hand slowly from Severita’s chin. The pain was fire, roaring and shaking through her, but she did not lower her gaze from her canoness.

  ‘You were always so strong, Severita. I should not let such weakness find purchase in me, but I confess that I am grieved that we did not find the flaw in you sooner. For that sin we all must pay.’

  ‘The sin… is mine… alone,’ said Severita. She could feel blood running down her chin.

  ‘No,’ said Orn, ‘no, it is not. Tell me, though, why did you do it, Severita?’

  ‘I did it… to save them…’

  ‘Their death or survival was not what was commanded, sister. If their time had come and their end been written, then so be it. The shrine of Saint Aspira was light to the faithful for millennia and is now ashes – by such cuts is faith broken and without faith mankind is nothing. Next to that the souls you saved from death are what?’

  A girl trying to hold on to the arms of her nurse while cold metal fingers reached to pull her away… A face looking up at Severita from the throng crowding the vaults of Saint Aspira’s shrine, fear in wide, dark eyes…

  ‘The Emperor protects us, and we protect in his name…’

  Orn let out a breath and stepped back, face hardening.

  They had survived, all three hundred and five souls who had sought shelter at the shrine. She had ordered the withdrawal, assigned her sisters to see the faithful to the shelter of the land beyond the mountains. She and her few Seraphim had stood alone on the stones of the shrine as the throng of the Archenemy rolled up the valley with the storm. Too few to hold. She had thought she would die there, had been ready for her last sight of the world to be the knives of the enemy.

  The shrine of Saint Aspira’s Refuge had burned. But Severita had lived. Bloodied, wounded, hanging by a thread of prayer and will, but alive. Alive to face the consequences of the sin of her choice.

  ‘You have sinned,’ said Orn at last. ‘You have sinned and you don’t even have the strength to face your own impiety. You do not deserve the absolution of execution.’ Orn began to walk away. ‘You will be outcast. You will be shunned. You are sister to us no more.’

  And hanging from her chains, Severita’s head dropped, and before she could stop them, she felt tears form in her eyes and carry the blood of her wounds down her cheeks.

  PENITENT

  They took the iron mask from Severita’s head after five days
of hunger and silence. That act surprised her. She knew the path of penance, knew that it passed through many steps of which this was the first. They had given her water each day, piped it into her mouth through a hole in the mask, and that was how she had kept track of time. Only five of the fifteen days had passed. They should not have removed the mask yet.

  Light poured into her eyes and for an instant she was blind. Then shadows formed in the brilliance and the chains on her wrists jerked as she swayed.

  ‘What…’ she began before she could stop herself.

  A lash bit across her shoulders

  ‘The penitent shall not speak,’ came the cold tones of a female voice.

  ‘You will not do that again,’ said another voice, male, cold and controlled. ‘Her penance and redemption lie in my hands now. Do you understand?’

  A pause, a shifting of the shadows.

  ‘Yes, inquisitor,’ came the female voice.

  Inquisitor. The word echoed in her skull. The light was less blinding now. A blurred shape loomed above her.

  ‘Can you raise your eyes, Severita?’ asked the inquisitor. Severita blinked, and moved her hands to wipe her eyes. The chain snapped taut.

  ‘Release her bonds,’ said the inquisitor.

  ‘Lord, she is not permitted to–’

  ‘Release her bonds.’

  Severita almost flinched at the cold force in the words.

  The chains were released a second later. She wiped her eyes, blinking. The inquisitor stood above her, dark eyes in a young face of hard angles. He wore a storm coat of dark grey and a crimson cuirass. A mind-linked cannon twitched on his shoulder as he looked down at her.

  ‘I am Covenant,’ he said.

  ‘Are you here to give me judgement, lord?’ she asked.

  He gave a single shake of his head, his eyes steady on her.

  ‘I cannot offer redemption or forgiveness,’ he said. The gun on his shoulder twitched again. Its targeting lenses focused on her. ‘All I can offer is death or service, the choice of which rests in your hands, Severita.’

  ‘I deserve no choice,’ she said.

  ‘But that is why you are here, is it not? You chose to let a shrine burn.’

  ‘We are instruments of the Emperor’s will. It is not for us to make choices.’

  He looked at her for a long moment, and then crouched down so that he was at eye level with her.

  ‘You have never had a choice, not since you were taken to the schola, not since you rose to the Sisterhood. Your sin is not that you let a shrine burn, Severita – it is that for once in your life you wanted to make a choice.’

  She stared at him, shocked. His gaze was unmoving. The gun on his shoulder had rotated its aim away from her.

  ‘Choices do not bring us peace, Severita, they are the root of all pain. You are to do penance for your sins, and that will either be in death or in my service as an exile from your sisters. But the first brand of that penance is the choice of whether to live with your pain or die for your sin.’

  She felt a hollowness open in her, felt the years of sisterhood tumble into the void, felt the scream of a child taken from the only home it had ever known rise until it echoed behind her eyes.

  Covenant waited, watching her. She looked at him and opened her mouth to reply.

  PEACE

  The wall next to Severita dissolved in flame and shadow. Shards of rock flew out. Pain spiked through her as she felt one of the splinters find the join at the back of her knee and punch through to the flesh within. She did not even stumble, but came up, pistols firing in concert, bolts exploding amongst the figures boiling up out of the dark.

  Most wore tatters of rag and skin over crude, welded plate. Their faces were carved, bloodied ruins. Blood poured down their torsos under the lash of rain. Lightning struck down, strobing in bright chains between the hill tops and crags. The shrine was alone, walls and steps lit by the flare light and fire. The others of her sisters had gone, withdrawn with the people who had come to the shrine for safety. She alone remained. One figure in crimson.

  A figure came bounding up the rubble. It had hooks in place of its hands. Its body bulged with muscle and black smoke oozed from its wounds. The ruin of its face screamed at her with a tongueless mouth. She snapped a pistol around. A blade-limb struck the gun and sliced it in two. The shell she had just fired exploded in the barrel. Shrapnel tore at the bloody figure. It howled. Severita staggered. The fingers of her right gauntlet were smoking and torn, the servos in the arm blown out from absorbing the explosion.

  The blade-limbed thing sprang forwards. She ducked back. The silent prayer on her tongue changed. The note of fury that had guided her aim fell to a clear voice speaking old words. Her hand found the hilt of her sword behind her shoulder.

  The world was a turning tableau around her…

  Blood and lightning…

  Screams and fire…

  The sword slid free.

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

  The blade-limbed enemy swung. Muscles rammed the cutting edge through the air.

  ‘They said you were pure, and deadly, and clever, which is why you are here.’

  Severita ducked, and lightning lit along her sword.

  ‘It is like a storm held still.’

  The edge of her blade met her enemy’s arm just below the elbow. Steel and lightning split it from joint to shoulder, and Severita was already turning, already hearing the next thread of prayer pulling her on as the old voices spoke in her soul.

  ‘Your father and mother are dead,’ said a man with twin augmetic eyes and silver hands.

  The sword sliced, and the blade-limbed figure was falling, head and blood tumbling away.

  ‘And you have no choice.’

  A figure with a flayed face and a gun in its blood-caked hands. And the sword looped up to drag its tip and edge through groin, gun and chest, and Severita could hear the roar of blood in her ears and the beat of the prayer and the turning of the sword.

  …Honour His servants…

  Blood and explosions and screams, and the world turning around her in a blur of red and fire as she cut and leapt along the razor’s path, faces snarling at her and blades reaching for her as she stepped and twisted and cut. Sharp edges bit into her armour. Pain blazed in her.

  …for they speak in His voice…

  She turned her grip on the sword, pivoted, cut, reversed the cut. The images and voices of the past slid past her like the failed blows of the enemy. Her breath had steadied now, her heartbeat dropping as though she were moving in sleep, the words of the prayer a soft voice in a dream of purity.

  And then – suddenly – quiet, and the words of the prayer and the circle around her made by the passing of the sword.

  And the crone was there in memory.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked Severita, taking the sword from Severita’s hand while she breathed white into a cold morning.

  ‘It is peace,’ said Severita.

  And the crone had smiled.

  ‘Just so,’ she said. ‘It is the only peace you will ever know.’

  In the training chapel on the Dionysia, Severita turned through the pattern of cuts and steps and let the voices of the past rise, and roll past her.

  Tremble before His majesty…

  A cut from high above her shoulder, the tip of the sword almost touching the iron of the floor, the thread of breath pulling from her lips as she placed her foot and pivoted.

  …for we all walk in His immortal shadow.

  The sword blade flicked out, and her muscles uncoiled into the blow that sang in the stillness as she turned, and within, for a moment – a moment no longer than the beat of a heart – all was quiet.

  THE SPIRIT OF COGS

  ‘What dreams sleep in iron that by the turning wheel mankind has
brought to waking?’

  – from the Smith’s Address as spoken in the Penitent Cycles of Terra

  ‘There are ghosts in machines.’ Glavius-4-Rho looked up from the mirror of the blade in his hands as he spoke.

  The former Sister of Battle sat on the floor of the armourium, legs crossed, armour replaced by a grey hessian smock. She had been sitting there ever since she had brought him the sword. It had been damaged, the edge notched and a tine sheared from the cross-guard. He had taken it from her and begun the repairs as soon as she had shown it to him. He had not grieved for the damage done to the sword – some things were created to be damaged.

  ‘Ghosts?’ said Severita at last. ‘Machines have spirits – that is what all of your priesthood say, isn’t it?’

  He felt the servos in his frame twitch as a plasma flame lit on his workbench. Part of him wondered if starting this exchange had been wise. He was a magos after all, a high guardian of the truths and mysteries of the most sacred Machine-God…

  No… he was not. That was factually incorrect. He had failed. He had lost the machines and knowledge entrusted to his care. He was a penitent, grey-robed, where once he had been clad in red. Without rank where once he had been most high. He served Inquisitor Covenant now – that was his function.

  He looked again at Severita. Like him, she was an outcast from her own kind. She had been a warrior of the Adepta Sororitas but some transgression had seen her cast from her order, service to Covenant replacing the bonds to her sisters. He liked her, and she had made a habit of talking to him. She asked him questions, questions not about the function of things but about him, about what he had experienced, about what he believed. He did not understand why. A non-logical part of his mind thought that she was trying to redeem him.

  He focused his attention on the sword for fifteen seconds while his servo-arms held it steady as he dipped its blade into the plasma flame on his workbench. Blue fire washed over its edge and sent light fizzing from its mirror finish. The beam cut off and he held the blade as it cooled.