Divination - John French Page 18

  Viola was still for a moment and then settled back.

  ‘It was the poison from the chalice, but I should have had time…’

  ‘The Doorkeeper, the hag, she always fills one cup with three times the dose of the others. The thief’s cup they call it – the life price paid at random by anyone who goes into the Dead Archives. A bitter form of vengeance for all that lost knowledge.’

  ‘But the agreement…’ she said.

  ‘The one your brother made to find me, and get you into the archive? The Doorkeeper wanted her due, and made no bargain. It’s just lucky I decided to keep you alive.’

  ‘You know the antidote?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It wasn’t poison keeping me down there, remember.’

  ‘You took our offer, though,’ said Viola.

  ‘Not much of a choice.’

  ‘We tend not to give much room for that.’

  ‘Quite a price you charge for freedom,’ Tristana said. ‘No memories, the last ten years gone. I finish this chat, walk out and then, the next thing I know, none of this sorry story will exist for me.’

  ‘We will put something more pleasant in their place, I am sure,’ said Viola. ‘But we can’t let you take what you stole with you.’

  Tristana winced, eyes fixed on a point in the distance.

  ‘You think the people who paid me to steal it would still want it?’ she asked. ‘Even after all this time?’

  ‘I am certain of it,’ said Viola.

  Tristana nodded, half to herself.

  ‘They were like you, you know,’ she said after a moment. ‘The people who hired me to steal the tractate from the archives. They were like you, and the others you are with – high authority, sharp as a knife, can cut through anything and don’t care who it cuts on the way.’

  Viola was silent.

  ‘Throne knows why you want that book,’ said Tristana after a while. ‘It makes no sense, you know? The tractate I mean. I was not lying, I was a scholar before I was a thief. And the book that your witch is going to yank out of my head makes no sense. Reams and reams of archaic religious verse, voices singing questions about the God Emperor’s divinity across the pages, but no sense, no meaning, no secrets.’

  ‘Nothing worth stealing,’ said Viola.

  ‘I stole it because I was paid to, and because I could, and what other reason is there to do anything?’ Tristana shook her head and turned to the door. ‘Be seeing you,’ she said as the door opened in front of her.

  ‘No,’ said Viola. ‘You won’t.’

  Tristana shrugged.

  ‘You never know,’ she said, and then was gone.

  XIII

  Cleander found Covenant, his sister and Josef in a cupola of the high observation tower, halfway down the Dionysia’s spine. They broke off talking as he entered. Josef gave Cleander a grim smile. Covenant, a curt nod. Viola, a thin smile. Cleander replied with a beautifully executed formal bow.

  ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘The thief will wake on Nix with a hangover, the memory of a job well done for the von Castellan dynasty and enough funds to lose herself in pleasure or find trouble.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘I am almost envious.’

  ‘The Tractate Serith was extracted from her memory cleanly,’ continued Viola, as though she had not heard him.

  ‘Is there any doubt that it was the Triumvirate that sent her to get it?’ asked Josef.

  ‘There is always doubt,’ said Viola. But then shook her head. Her eyes went to the storm bruised stars beyond the cupola’s dome.

  ‘It was them,’ said Covenant.

  ‘If they wanted it so much then why did they not track down what happened to their thief?’ asked Cleander.

  ‘Who says they did not?’ said Covenant, and turned his gaze to Viola. ‘The agents following her are competent?’

  ‘Your best, my lord.’

  Cleander began to laugh truly then.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, the humour still ringing in his voice. ‘Of course. You didn’t even want the book. The whole sorry pantomime was just for her, and now you are going to send her off without a memory in her head and watch to see who comes for her.’ He shook his head. ‘How do you know the Triumvirate will know she is loose?’

  ‘We believe there are agents of our opposition in the archive hierarchy,’ said Viola.

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said Cleander, turning his smile on Viola. ‘I did wonder why you wanted the full man of money and power routine from me. Just wanted to make as much noise as possible so that someone would notice – that was it, wasn’t it? Which of them do you think will whisper that someone came looking for a thief of knowledge?’

  ‘High Archivist Ki, possibly,’ said Viola, ‘but it scarcely matters. Someone will hear.’

  ‘Very good, very good. How clever you are, sister.’

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ asked Viola.

  ‘Would you believe me if I said no?’ said Cleander. ‘And the tractate? I am guessing that bad religious poetry does not bring Horusians out of the shadows to feed. Are you finally going to tell me, simple soul that I am, what it is?’

  They looked at him for a long moment, and then Covenant turned away and looked down at the spear-tip prow of the Dionysia pointing towards the stars.

  ‘The tractate is not a book,’ said Covenant, ‘it is a code. And in that code are laced ideas and insights into divinity and power and the future.’

  ‘Important then…’ said Cleander.

  ‘No,’ said Covenant. ‘It is a corrupting idea given angelic form. It is heresy.’

  ‘And we… you have this now? Besides bait, what use can it be? You don’t intend to read it, do you?’

  Covenant gave no answer, and after a long minute of silence, left. Josef followed, leaving Cleander and Viola alone on the viewing platform.

  ‘He knows what he is doing,’ said Viola at last.

  ‘Yes, he does,’ breathed Cleander. ‘That’s what worries me.’ Viola made no answer, and after a glance at the red-purple glow of the storm, Cleander left and went to see what he could find to drink.

  THE MAIDEN OF THE DREAM

  ‘If you have nothing, then no one can steal from you.

  Desire nothing and nothing can tempt you.

  Lose everything and you can take anything.’

  - Aphorism of the Nepenthe Collegium

  of the Scholastia Psykana

  Mylasa Yaygus stepped from the shelter of the doorway as the grey man passed. It had started to snow, white shards falling from an iron sky to carpet the city streets. Crisp whiteness crunched under her boots. The black chimneys rose above her, scraping the cold sky. A layer of cold mist had begun to form in the air, pulling halos from the streetlights atop their iron poles. The street was almost empty, just a few scribes from the broker houses, their black velvet robes gathering a scattering of white as they carried out whatever task their masters had set them. A message runner stalked past her, sprung bladed legs hissing, eye lenses fixed on its distant destination. The grey man moved between the scattered pedestrians like water, his movements unhurried and fluid. A long cloak hung from his shoulders, its hood lowered around his neck to allow for the tall hat that marked him as a debt broker of the second order. Under the cloak he wore layered coats of grey velvet and silk. His gloves were soft leather the colour of storm clouds; his neckerchief and waistcoat were slate grey with silver buttons. The cane in his left hand was burnished steel capped with jet. Thus clothed he fitted the world he moved through without seam and wrinkle. He did not belong here, though. He was not a debt broker. In a sense he was not even human.

  The snow began to fall more heavily; Mylasa quickened her step. Ahead of her the man in grey stepped out of the way of a pair of tracked servitors pulling a cart heaped with scroll tubes. He glanced behind him and for an instant she had a view of the pale flesh of his face and his h
ook-nosed profile. She saw the glint of a dark eye.

  A cluster of chained scribes came out of the thickening swirl of snow. The grey man slid behind them. Mylasa swore to herself, and dodged forwards. The scribes’ silver chains jangled as she jostled them. Curses followed her. The shadow of the grey man was vanishing into an alley mouth. She ran, shedding pretence, knife sliding into her right palm, green cloak and skirts swirling behind her. He had seen her, and that meant that he needed removing now. Never mind the fact that the rest of his allies were still out there, never mind that it would mean that more might come. He had to die here and now.

  She came round the corner. Black iron walls rose up and up and up above her. The grey man was ten paces down the alley, his back still to her. She ran at him, footsteps muffled in the thickening snow. She reached for his shoulder. Heavy flakes were swirling down. High above, the flare fires from the promethium works breathed fire and orange light into the dull metal sky. She gripped his shoulder and yanked back. The knife in her right hand rose, point first to meet his back as he fell.

  He did not fall.

  He spun. The thick grey fabric of the cloak yanked out of her hand. The steel cane in his left hand came around with him and hit her forearm with a crack of shattering bone. She cartwheeled back through the white-flecked air, shutting down the pain and shock flooding her. The man in grey seemed still as the world turned around her. She had an impression of sharp features framed by dark sideburns.

  Mylasa landed and threw the knife in a single movement. The blade slid to a stop in mid-air. The snow slowed its fall. Frost covered the floating dagger’s blade. The man in grey looked at her for a long instant. Mylasa leapt, muscles flicking her body into the air as her left foot extended into a kick.

  A wall of invisible force punched her from the air. More bones broke inside her. More pain. She hit the snow-covered ground, tried to roll, but found the point of the steel walking cane pressed into her neck. The man in grey stood above her. He held her own dagger in his left hand with the casual ease of a killer.

  She took a breath. Something wet clicked in her chest, she spluttered, and tasted iron on her lips. She tried again and, rather than defiance, a question came from her mouth.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Covenant,’ said the grey man. ‘Or rather that is the name of the person who stood here when this encounter occurred between him and his would-be killer. But you were not here, Mylasa. When the gene-assassin called Yaygus came out of the snow-filled night to kill Covenant, you were far above the clouds from which this remembered snow falls. So, to answer your question, my girl, I am the voice of someone you don’t remember.’

  ‘What–’

  ‘But the real question, Mylasa,’ said the mouth of the man in grey, ‘is who are you?’

  And before the reply could come the snow swirled, and the steel cane lashed down, and the world was blank whiteness.

  Josef looked down through the viewport at the pair of figures in the cell beneath. Frost covered the glass on both sides. A smell of ozone filled the air even in the observation deck. Static crackled across the walls inside the cell. The two figures within the room were completely still. One was only loosely humanoid, a shrunken, withered thing. It hung above the floor, black robes and vestigial limbs suspended beneath a head ringed by chromed machinery. A throbbing dome of sickly light flickered above its bare skull. The second figure was a wasp-thin man, tall and gaunt. Slick black robes clung to his torso and flared wide beneath his waist. Cables looped under his spindle-thin arms to sockets in his ribs. A metal halo of black iron spikes rose above his head, the metal ring rooted in his skull.

  ‘How long until this… trial is complete?’ said Josef, and fidgeted with the fit of his robes. He was sweating despite the cold, moisture rolling down his wide face.

  The woman that stood beside him turned her face towards him. Her skin was pale and had the washed-out greyness of someone who lived their life in the recycled air and false gravity of void ships. Her form-fitting armour was graphite grey, and the colour of her lips hid beneath blue tattooed lines that spilled down her chin. Her eyes were hard, pinprick pupils set in irises of blue so pale that they were almost colourless.

  ‘Do you wish her ordeal to end?’ she said.

  ‘I wish you to answer my question,’ said Josef.

  The armoured woman rotated her head to look back down into the cell.

  ‘It will last until we have the answer to our question.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Are you demanding to know?’

  ‘I am the servant of an inquisitor, and I am asking.’

  The woman tilted her head as if in acknowledgement.

  ‘The Primaris named Mylasa serves Inquisitor Covenant in the interrogation of heretics and the purgation of memories from the tainted. Oblivion is her skill, her craft, and one that your master clearly values.’

  Josef kept his face impassive. In truth he was sometimes unsure if Covenant valued anyone now, but he certainly found Mylasa useful. Covenant was a daemon hunter of the Ordo Malleus, and part of his self-imposed duty was to maintain one of the greatest and most terrible secrets in the universe, that – in a shadow realm just out of sight – vast and terrible forces coiled, and hungered, and dreamed of the enslavement of mankind. The Dark Gods of Chaos and their daemons could corrupt a soul in countless ways, but many of those ways began with simple knowledge of their existence. Mylasa was a weapon in the war that Covenant and his kind fought against Chaos. She could rip truths from minds, and cleanse the minds of those who had learnt the truth, and were too valuable to the Imperium to grant the peace of bullet or blade. She was a psychic torturer and executioner.

  Josef held the woman’s gaze, and did not blink.

  ‘She is valued very highly,’ he said carefully.

  ‘And that is why your master has requested this examination, and allowed the Scholastia Psykana to administer it.’

  Josef looked back at the scene beyond the frosted crystal panes. The air had taken on a heat-haze blur. Stigmata had opened on Mylasa’s withered limbs. Blood dripped from her bare toes and fingers.

  ‘You do not like what we do to her,’ said the woman, still looking at Josef. ‘You think us cruel. You think this unnecessary.’

  ‘You have the right to do this, but I have the right not to like it,’ he growled.

  The woman shrugged.

  ‘You pity her, preacher, but you should not. Mylasa is a Daughter of Nepenthe. Few can do as she does – cut into others’ thoughts, see and live through their eyes, touch horror and corruption and remain untouched… that is a great gift.’ The woman’s pale eyes focused on the floating, withered figure opposite the gaunt man. The blood pooling on the deck beneath Mylasa was freezing into a crazed, red mirror. ‘But what of her memories? What of her purity? She sees and destroys thoughts that cannot exist, but she must live those memories, again and again. And her soul is not mundane like mine or yours. It burns in the night of the warp. What do all the poisons she drinks do to her? She is strong. Yes, she is strong. But strength is just weakness seen from another point of view.’

  ‘So you are seeing if she is corrupted?’ said Josef, and felt his lip curl as he spoke. ‘Who are you to judge that?’

  ‘We cannot judge whether she is corrupt. But we can judge if the defences she was given still hold.’

  ‘How?’ snapped Josef.

  The woman just shrugged.

  ‘By asking the only question that matters – who is she?’

  Mylasa Ilk woke with the scream on her lips. Her hands reached out and found the sweat-soaked blanket. She thrashed. The fabric tangled her limbs. She was shivering with heat. Her head was pounding. Fever burned through her muscles and skin. White shards were falling all around her. They looked like flakes of ash, like the plumes of burning corpses that fell in the dreams of golden light and scr
eaming.

  She could not see. There was just whiteness and the–

  ‘Hush,’ said her sister’s voice close to her. Mylasa went still. ‘Hush now. It’s all right.’ Cool hands peeled the blanket from her soaking body, untangling its folds from her arms and legs. Mylasa reached out, feeling her fingers shake as they found her sister’s face. There were tears on the cheeks. ‘It’s all right, just another bad dream.’

  Her sight began to clear. The whirl of white was settling, the reality of the hab room pushing into her blinking eyes.

  The room was the sum of very little: a square box of metal, four strides to a side, enclosing all their lives; a blank door in a bolted frame; a food burner; the mattress pallet she lay on; the work overalls stacked neatly despite the fact that they would never be clean. The air-duct fan turned slowly behind a circle of wire mesh. The jug for their water ration sat on the floor beside the mattress, drained to the one quarter line. The numerals on the work rotation clock blinked red from the opposite wall.

  Mylasa’s sister knelt down, red hair falling in a matted tangle beside her face.

  Beautiful hair, said a small voice in the whirl of her mind. Like copper.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said her sister, and tried to hug Mylasa, but she pushed her away.

  ‘There’s something…’ said Mylasa. The words were thick on her tongue. ‘Something from my dream.’

  ‘You shouldn’t–’

  ‘Something is going to happen,’ said Mylasa, feeling the certainty fill her as she spoke. ‘The cold… it was so cold… and they…’

  ‘Forget it,’ said her sister. ‘You must forget it. If anyone heard…’

  ‘No!’ Mylasa shoved her sister away. ‘It is out there, the cold dark, and the ship that moves but not through water. It is–’

  ‘Stop!’ shouted her sister, ‘Please, for the love of the Throne stop. They are just dreams, just dreams. Please–’

  The door blew inwards. Mylasa’s sister was turning as the blast caught her. She hammered into the metal wall, and fell, a rag doll thrown by a child. Figures in black armour came through the door. Silver masks covered their mouths. Tattooed script covered their bare heads. Swords and pistols glinted in their hands. Mylasa screamed, and the scream froze the cloud of debris before it could fall. She stood. Bolts ripped from the wall. The jug of water shattered. Debris and fragments rose like a wave from the surface of the sea and rushed towards the armoured figures. The squall of broken glass and metal tore the first figure through the door in half. Blood scattered. The second blasted backwards, its armour crushing the flesh beneath.