Blood Rite - Rachel Harrison Read online

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I was a pilgrim once. I travelled for thirty-six days to get here. Ship to port, to ship again. It took another week to get into the city. Another three days to make the Climb.’

  ‘And then you chose to stay.’

  ‘After I had seen the chalice, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. It was beautiful.’

  It had been beautiful to Darrago, too. Not just the chalice, but the crowds of pilgrims. Those hymns, sung loud. But it was not just beauty he saw, nor faith. He thinks too of the highest ranking members of the priesthood, borne aloft on clockwork walkers, or carried on palanquins by the faithful.

  ‘When last I served here, I saw the divide between the pilgrims and the priests,’ Darrago says. ‘Between the poor and the privileged.’

  He remembers the fat those priests had carried. The heavy cloth of their robes and the thick chains of gold they slung around their necks. The wine they drank and the food they wasted.

  ‘The divide grows wider every year,’ Orako says. ‘Recently, peace has been hard to maintain. Even before the storm began, there were problems. Acts of cruelty.’

  ‘Among the pilgrims?’ Darrago asks.

  Orako shakes her head.

  ‘No,’ she says, softly. ‘I should have seen it. Should have realised what was happening. But then the storm came, and everything changed.’

  ‘With quick work, we can yet salvage this place,’ Darrago says.

  ‘Damage like this, though,’ Orako says. ‘Can it ever truly be undone?’

  Darrago takes a moment to answer. He will not lie to the shrine-sergeant, so he chooses his words carefully. He thinks of overstitching tears in cloth. Drawing ragged edges together.

  ‘We can restore it,’ he says.

  Orako shakes her head. She takes a ragged breath.

  ‘I do not understand how those who turned could do it. How they could defile this place, after giving everything just to see it.’

  ‘Weakness.’

  The single word comes from Maeklus. Orako looks to him, as if she is expecting him to elaborate.

  ‘You will have to forgive my brother, shrine-sergeant,’ Ebellius says. ‘His words are few, and rarely comforting.’

  ‘Better that than a talkative fool,’ Maeklus replies, flatly.

  Orako looks from one to the other. Darrago can tell by the expression on her face that she cannot tell the humour for what it is.

  ‘He speaks in jest, of course,’ Ebellius says, and he laughs.

  ‘Of course,’ Maeklus says, just as flatly as before.

  ‘Quiet, the both of you,’ Victorno says, and he stops in place.

  Darrago realises why when the vox hisses live in his ears.

  ‘Archangels.’ The voice belongs to Captain Donato. ‘Do you live?’

  ‘Most of us,’ Victorno answers. ‘We lost Arthemio. The failings of the teleport took him from us.’

  There is a snarl that isn’t just vox. It is Donato, too.

  ‘Alfeo and Vytali fell the same way,’ Donato says. ‘Lost to the storm.’

  Darrago remembers the moment of translation. The smile of Tur Zalak and the dark shape that brought with it whispers played in reverse. Whispers that he can still hear.

  ‘To something in the storm,’ he says, over the squad channel.

  ‘Aye, brother,’ Donato says. Gunfire undercuts his words. ‘There is a prayer hall at the centre of the shrine. The Angel’s Heart. Make for it, and we will regroup with you. From there we will push up together and retake the Crown.’

  ‘Aye, brother-captain,’ Victorno says.

  The vox-link severs with another hiss. Darrago realises that Orako is looking blankly at them.

  ‘What is happening?’ she asks.

  ‘A change of plan,’ Victorno says. ‘The Heart first, then the Crown. We must reunite with the brothers that we have left.’

  Orako’s eyes widen. ‘Then you have taken losses too?’

  She makes it sound unthinkable. Darrago remembers what it is that mortals see when they look at the Adeptus Astartes. He remembers his first service on this world, where the pilgrims bowed before him and would press their hands to the stone in the wake of his passing, as if he were holy to them too, just like Sanguis Gloria.

  ‘We lost three of our own,’ he says.

  The breath Orako takes makes her shoulders fall. She puts her hand to that icon pinned to her robes again.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she says.

  Darrago thinks about those words. Death is expected for him and his brothers. It is why they are made, to deal it to their enemies and to endure until they too succumb to it. That does not mean that he does not mourn, or grieve, or that he does not appreciate the sentiment behind the shrine-sergeant’s words, simple as they may be.

  ‘Thank you, Talina Orako,’ he says.

  When the cultists come for them, those reverse whispers seem to grow louder. Darrago can hear them even over the sound of las-fire, and bolt-shell detonations. He can hear it over the growl of armour, and the splintering of stone. Over the cultists’ own bellowed words.

  Blood. Blood for the Blessed.

  A thousand dead pilgrims watch in frozen silence from the walls as Darrago fires his storm bolter into the press, sending cultists reeling. In the staccato light of muzzle flare, he catches a clear glimpse of one who has cut away a good deal of his own skin so that his teeth are always bared. Like the woman in the ossuary, the cultist’s teeth are filed to points in what feels like a poor mimicry of Darrago’s own pointed canines. The cultist’s jaws hinge wide in a wordless, slurring scream that is cut short as one of Darrago’s bolt-rounds hits him, centre-mass.

  Beside Darrago, Sanyctus cuts through the crowd. Orako is at his side as she has been since they found her in the memorial hallway. She fires her lasgun in bursts, catching those who are not cut down by Sanyctus’ claws. Ahead, Maeklus makes fires of the traitors, while Ebellius clears the space around him with his power fist, setting the air crackling with the displacement field. Victorno pushes a wedge into the crowd with the face of his shield, breaking bones and crushing the fallen underfoot.

  ‘Push through,’ Victorno shouts, over the noise. ‘Do not let them slow us.’

  ‘The launcher is always an option, brother-sergeant,’ Ebellius says. ‘Just give the word. I could have the lot of them dead in an instant.’

  ‘Didn’t you learn a thing from Corolis?’ Maeklus asks.

  ‘Of course I did,’ Ebellius says, with a laugh. ‘It was very effective.’

  ‘No launcher,’ Victorno growls. ‘Not until I allow it.’

  There is a rasp from Ebellius’ external vox that Darrago knows to be a sigh.

  ‘Aye, brother-sergeant,’ he says.

  So they keep pushing forwards through the dead. Watched by the dead. Darrago holds tight to the standard, keeping it raised even as the crowd of cultists pushes and pulls like a tide and the floor underfoot becomes slick with blood.

  Blood, the cultists say, as one. Blood for the Blessed.

  Two cultists part the crowd. They are big, gene-bulked men with replacement arms of functional steel, as if they might once have been labourers. Both of them carry toothed industrial vibro-blades that are made to cut stone. Matching, ragged wounds mar the cultists’ faces where they have excised their loyalty tattoos. One of them lunges for Darrago. The vibro-blade skids and scrapes across his vambrace with a burst of sparks. He raises his storm bolter and fires again, putting two smoking craters in the cultist’s chest. The cultist bellows like an animal, dropping his weapon on the stone. Ebellius puts the wounded cultist down for good with his power fist. The other cultist goes for Orako. The shrine-sergeant fires her lasgun until the cultist is too close to fire on. She ducks under the blade, but it snags her and makes her cry out.

  ‘Blood!’ the cultist roars.

  Darrago turns to aid Orako, and sees Sanyctus do the same, but the shrine-sergeant is already moving. She gets inside the cultist’s reach and drives the butt of her rif
le into his face. Once. Twice. Blood sprays over her and the cultist falls onto his back, his nerveless fingers still gunning the vibro-blade. Orako drops onto his chest and keeps hitting until Darrago can hear the rifle impacting against the stone floor. As the rest of the cultists fall to bolter and blade, he approaches her.

  ‘Shrine-sergeant,’ he says.

  She doesn’t look up. Her strikes have become weak and clumsy. Her head lolls and her shoulders heave with breathing.

  ‘Talina.’ It is Sanyctus who speaks her given name. It seems to bring Orako back to herself. She finally stops and looks up. Her face is dashed with dark blood.

  ‘Angels,’ she says, and she frowns, before looking back down at what is left of the cultist she killed. ‘Oh,’ Orako says. ‘Oh, no.’

  She staggers to her feet and lets her rifle hang by the strap. The stock and body are dented and misshapen from where she used it like a club. She wipes her hand over her face, smearing the blood. Darrago is struck by a memory then, of a distant world, long ago. A memory that he shakes clear before it can sink its teeth in.

  ‘I wanted to make them stop,’ Orako is saying. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘You have,’ Sanyctus says. ‘We have.’

  ‘Not the cultists,’ she says.

  ‘Then what?’ Darrago asks.

  She looks at him. She is shaking again, though this time it is adrenal and violent. Instinctual.

  ‘The whispers,’ she says. ‘They are torture.’

  ‘She is breaking.’

  Again, Maeklus’ words come over the vox, and again they are not meant to be cruel. He stands and watches her, his eyes narrowed above his breather mask.

  Sanyctus shakes his head. The movement is sharp and jagged.

  ‘No,’ he says, over the same link. ‘She isn’t. She won’t.’

  Those words, and the desperation with which Sanyctus says them, grieve Darrago. He remembers a different conversation between himself and Captain Donato. One that made him feel that same desperation, though he tried his best to hide it.

  He will not break, he had told Donato. I swear it.

  ‘Talina,’ Sanyctus says to Orako. ‘The whispers will only hurt you if you let them. Hold close to your name. To your oaths. To yourself.’

  Darrago recognises the words easily, because they are not so different to the words he used with Sanyctus on Kalatar. He wonders if it is a deliberate choice.

  With all of them watching, Orako straightens herself.

  ‘Talina Orako,’ she says, absently. ‘Sworn to protect the shrine of Sanguis Gloria. Once a daughter, then an orphan. A trader, then a pilgrim. Last of all a soldier.’ She looks down at the body once more. ‘But always a loyal servant of the God-Emperor of Mankind.’

  ‘Good,’ Sanyctus says. ‘Hold to that.’

  Orako nods. She bows her head, one closed fist to the icon of the chalice pinned to her uniform.

  ‘See?’ Sanyctus says, over the vox-link. ‘She will not break.’

  Maeklus merely shrugs and turns away. Victorno lowers his hammer fractionally.

  ‘I hope that you are right,’ Victorno says. ‘Because you know what must be done if you are not.’

  Darrago sees Sanyctus clench his fists inside those clawed gauntlets he wears as he watches Orako set off towards the next hallway.

  ‘I know,’ he says.

  THE SANGUINE TEAR, NOW…

  ‘That violence you saw in the mortal. You believed the rite was the cause.’

  Darrago thinks about that for a moment. He looks down at his hands. They are the hands of a killer, made blunt and heavy by his ascension and criss-crossed with scars from everything that has come since.

  ‘I believe there is violence in every soul,’ Darrago says. ‘The rite just drew it out. Fed it and fuelled it.’

  ‘Just for the mortals?’

  Darrago knows the question isn’t really a question. That his brother knows the answer, and wants to hear it spoken aloud.

  ‘We have more than our fair share of violence in our souls,’ Darrago says. ‘You know that better than most.’

  ‘I do.’ Darrago’s brother says nothing else. He just waits. That kind of studied, deliberate silence is in itself an art. In some ways it is no different than Darrago’s own needlework, or Captain Donato’s weaponcraft. It all takes patience and skill. Darrago listens to the ship humming and the ceaseless exhalation of the ventilation systems, and he knows that he cannot outlast that silence. That he must speak, and do so honestly.

  ‘The rite drew out the Thirst, too,’ Darrago says. ‘I felt it keenly. Each moment was a test.’

  ‘And what of the Rage?’

  The word sets a fire in Darrago’s blood. Rage. The Thirst is hard enough to speak of. It is a constant pressure. A shadow companion that hangs at all of their backs like darkened wings. The Rage, though. That is other.

  ‘Had I felt that keenly, we would not be having this conversation,’ Darrago says.

  ‘And what of your brothers?’

  The words are like a physical blow.

  ‘What of them?’ Darrago replies, struggling not to snarl.

  ‘Before you even set foot on Luminata, you were watchful of Adiccio Sanyctus. Is that not true?’

  Another question that is not truly a question.

  ‘I watch over all of my brothers,’ Darrago says. ‘That is part of what it means to be Company Ancient.’

  His brother does not frown, and his temper shows no signs of breaking. Darrago knows that is studied and deliberate too.

  ‘But Sanyctus more than any other,’ he says.

  Darrago thinks of standing in the teleportarium. He thinks of the days and weeks before that. The years.

  ‘Yes. Because he asked it of me, long ago, and I could never refuse a friend. Especially not one to whom I owe so much.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Deaths he spared me from,’ Darrago says. ‘A dozen, or more. The first was during the Torix campaign, before I bore this banner. Before I was granted the honour of Terminator plate. Adiccio walked through fire to find me, when the pyrostorms breached the citadel. We felled the last of the Torix witches together.’

  ‘I know the story,’ Darrago’s brother says. ‘I have seen the memorial scrolls.’

  ‘Torix was just the first,’ Darrago says. ‘He has always put his brothers’ lives before his own. He has always fiercely defended those who cannot defend themselves. Mortals, especially. He is selfless.’

  ‘Self-sacrificing,’ his brother says.

  Sacrificing.

  The word stirs Darrago’s blood.

  ‘Sacrifice is our father’s legacy,’ he says. ‘It is no sin.’

  ‘No, not a sin,’ his brother says, evenly. ‘But darkness can often be found in brothers who seek death so desperately.’

  Darrago shakes his head. His blood is more than stirring now.

  ‘You twist my words,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ his brother says, patiently. ‘I seek the truth. That is my duty, just as yours is to tend that banner, and to counsel your brothers. Duty is not spiteful, or malicious. Nor is the truth, though it may feel as if it is when it concerns a friend. I know that you feel that you owe Sanyctus. Perhaps you even wish to protect him, but you cannot. We may hide aspects of what we are from those outside the Chapter, but we must never hide from one another. That way lies darkness.’

  Darrago exhales a slow breath. Some of his anger bleeds away again in the face of his brother’s own unbroken temper.

  ‘I know.’

  Darrago starts putting the silver needles he uses back into the box alongside the spool of thread. He pushes them back into the needle cushion one at a time, exactly back where they came from.

  ‘You were more watchful of Sanyctus than the other Archangels.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  Darrago thinks of the years before. Of Torix and Solace and Perdicia and every other battle. Of standing on the teleportation dais on the
Sanguine Tear and seeing the distance in Sanyctus’ face.

  ‘Because I could not let him fight his curses alone,’ he says.

  THE SHRINE OF SANGUIS GLORIA, THEN…

  Darrago knows that close to the shrine’s summit, the hallways and prayer halls are grand. When last he saw them, the level of artistry had reminded him of the Arx Angelicum. Of the home that he was given. Those upper hallways have high, arched ceilings and delicate gilding inlaid into the walls. The marble underfoot is pristine and veined with crimson stria. This hallway, though, is far from the shrine’s summit, from the Crown. It is not grand, nor gilded. It is the pilgrimsway, built for those who come to Luminata with nothing but their souls to offer. It is wide like a roadway, made for dozens to walk side by side. Bare and functional and made of cold, old stone. Candles burn in wall niches, scenting the air with heady perfume. Red wax runs from them in long, slow trails. Everywhere Darrago sees graven images of his father carved from plaster and stone. Sanguinius is wrought a hundred times, in all of his aspects. The Angel, serene. The Angel, triumphant.

  The Angel, wrathful.

  Darrago throws out his arm and slams one of the cultists against the wall of the corridor. Both the man and the stone break under the impact of it. The man’s robes were white and gold once like Orako’s, sewn with the symbol of Sanguis Gloria – a chalice with feathered wings. Now they are dark with dirt and the deaths of others.

  ‘You cannot defeat us,’ the cultist says. His words are wet and rasping. ‘We are devoted. We will take blood. Blood–’

  ‘Enough,’ Darrago says, and he cuts the blasphemy short by breaking the cultist’s neck.

  The man grins wide even as he dies. Darrago releases him in disgust and the body slides down to lie broken at his feet. Blood paints its way down the wall, black and filthy with corruption.

  Another long, slow trail.

  Even through his helm’s filters, the smell of that blood hits Darrago hard with every breath that he takes. It stirs the primal part of him that never truly sleeps, that thirsts for blood and revels in the scent and the spill of it. The same part of him that imagined the panicked heartbeats of the pilgrims and thought of people as prey. The caged, vicious animal at his core. It is a curse he carries, as all of his brothers do. One of two: Thirst, and Rage. Darrago has been fighting his twin curses every day since his ascension to the Chapter. Keeping them contained is a matter of will and of strength, so he takes another breath and squeezes his eyes closed for an instant, thinking of a handful of old words that have always served him well.