Incarnation - John French Read online

  ‘It has been and will be again, but I will not give a gilding to your master’s manoeuvring by being the symbol of his influence and piety. The cause is worthy. He should make it himself.’

  ‘He has done all that he–’

  ‘He has done nothing that does not serve himself above the will of the Emperor. Others may be blind, but I am not. He wishes to be the Voice of the Concordance, maybe one day the bishop of the Great Cathedral, and then – as there seems no reason to put a limit on his ambitions – exalted bishop of Dominicus Prime. Perhaps cardinal. Perhaps his dreams go even further.’ The clack of Agata’s boots on the stone floor were like pistol shots. Pink was starting to flush Claudia’s cheeks and she was trying to hide the fact that she was breathing hard. ‘And maybe he will so rise, but if he does it will not be with my shoulders as a stepping stone.’

  ‘You may not be blind,’ snarled Claudia, ‘but your piety is just another name for stupidity, crone.’

  Agata stopped and pivoted so quickly that Claudia cannoned into her, stumbled back and for a second looked as though she was going to swing at the Battle Sister.

  ‘You need to control yourself.’ Agata’s voice was low and cold. ‘You are clever and devious, and I am sure that you are in your own way quietly dangerous. But remember that you are not speaking to merely a servant of the most Holy and High God-Emperor. I am not part of your master’s games. I am not here to take sides in what passes for piety. I am the hand by which the sword falls. I am death, little girl.’ She stepped back, seeing her face reflected in Claudia’s unblinking eyes. ‘Now you go away,’ she said.

  Claudia looked like she might say something, but then she bowed her head and turned, and went back the way they had come.

  Agata breathed out, turned the opposite way and began her walk again. She would have to add penance for pride to her roll of sins. It had not even given her much pleasure to see the fear bloom briefly in Claudia’s eyes, but that little was worth the price. She allowed herself a small smile.

  Something tapped on the stone floor just next to her. She heard it but did not stop. And then another tap, and another, seeming to follow her like the steps of a shadow. She stopped, frowning, and looked behind her. Red splashes dotted the worn flagstones. She froze, raising the pistol she always carried in her hand. The walkway was deserted apart from her, Claudia nowhere to be seen. Slowly she knelt – careful to keep her eyes on the space around – and dipped a gauntleted finger into the nearest splash. She brought it up to her face. The red liquid ran down the silver of her armoured finger.

  Blood.

  She looked up.

  And her gun was rising, finger tightening on the trigger before the shape her eyes saw had even filled her mind. Smoke black, stretched skin, needle teeth and red, dripping tongue. A prayer of protection rose to her lips as her finger tensed. And stopped.

  There was nothing there.

  Just the painted plaster, threaded with cracks and the faces of saints flaking to nothing. She took a breath and realised that she was shaking inside her armour. She looked at the floor. The blood that had spotted it moments ago was not there. Around her the enclosed bridge was still just as empty as before.

  ‘There,’ said a voice. ‘Life is tenacious, is it not?’

  Kordus Nem felt a hand on his face, and woke. Pain almost pushed him back down into the silence of his screams, but he held on and tried to breath.

  There had been… a parade passing through the alley outside the shack. People in red, walking in silence, he had gone to the door to look. He had heard of the red pilgrims. They were just another sect in the many that came and went amongst the tens of thousands living in the drifts. They had appeared a few months ago, but he had never seen them, and he had not known there were so many of them.

  One of the hooded figures had turned to look at him as they passed, and that had been the last thing he could remember.

  ‘Strong,’ said the voice. ‘Strong in spite of all.’ Fingers pulled open one of his eyes. The pain from the swollen mass of his face was like fire. He heard the scream come from his mouth in a bloody gasp. He tried to pull back, but a hand grabbed the back of his head, and held him. The touch was hot. Nem felt warmth spread from it.

  He opened his eyes.

  A man was crouching in front of him, his face inches from Nem’s. Ragged, red robes hung from him, and a wide hood framed a sallow complexion. The face smiled at him. Above the smile two bright blue eyes stared into Nem’s without blinking.

  A priest, thought Nem. There was something wrong though, something that Nem could not tease out of the pain that filled him.

  ‘You have suffered much, my brother,’ said the man. ‘I am called Krade, and I am here to bring you to the light of truth.’ His voice was soft, so soft… Nem blinked, his eyes swimming with pain.

  ‘My… family…’

  The face looked at him. The blue eyes did not blink. Nem thought he could smell something, something sweet and cloying.

  ‘Gone, my brother. Gone back to the red meat that we all are.’

  Nem heard the words. He felt them, felt them core through him. He could hear a scream, and only part of him knew it was his. He shook. Broken bones rubbed and hammered flesh screamed.

  ‘It hurts,’ said the man who looked like a priest. ‘And I don’t mean your meat. It hurts in your soul, doesn’t it? That is what the truth feels like, brother.’

  Nem heard the words. They were bitter, but soft, so soft, warm dark honey… Somehow they reached him clearly through the numbness. The man in the red robe was still holding Nem’s skull, he realised. Holding it close, like a father looking into the eyes of a new-born child.

  You are not a priest, thought Nem, and tried to say the words but they came out as a gurgle. He could smell the sweet scent clearly now. He recognised it but could not place it.

  ‘You brought them here, didn’t you?’ asked the man. ‘You brought your love and flesh and blood to this refuse heap of lies. You brought them to the foot of holiness, you prayed through the hunger, you scraped and starved, and prayed that you had not made a mistake.’

  There was something about the man’s eyes, no, not the eyes, the face. There was something wrong with it. He couldn’t focus though. All he could do was look into the blue eyes.

  ‘You did make a mistake, my brother. You made a mistake in believing that this world can be kind. There is no kindness that does not have a sharp edge.’

  Nem was shaking now, and the man’s words were pouring into him, unlocking doors behind which he had locked the guilt and doubts that had followed him in the stinking decks of the pilgrim ships and in the march north from the Crow Complex to the Monastery of the Last Candle. He had been a dock handler on Nemesis. He had saved and saved his labour tokens for the cost of the pilgrim ship. It had been him that had said that nothing would go wrong, that it was their holy duty, that the Emperor would protect. He had believed… He had believed, and now…

  ‘There is truth in this world, oh yes, there is truth, my brother. Do you want to know it?’

  Nem tried to shake his head. His skull was rattling with pain. Something was wrong. Even through the pain and shock, he knew that something was wrong.

  ‘Your god is dead. Hope is a lie. Hate is the only truth.’

  The man smiled more widely, and Nem saw the staples running up the jaw, saw the blood threading the whites of the eyes, the wet glisten of the ragged red robes. The sweat reek was thick in his nose and throat, and he knew what it was; knew with a cold rush that brought vomit to his tongue.

  ‘This is holy truth, brother,’ said the priest, and hoisted Nem into the air by his head as though he was a toy. Nem tried to kick his legs, but he just jerked feebly. ‘You know it, you just need to let it become your path.’

  And the man in red turned Nem’s face to the side, to the walls and floor of the shack he had called home, to where the smell wound the air like black incense. He saw, and found that he could still scream.

 
; Her cell was dark when Agata entered and closed the door behind her. For a moment she had stood still, the iron-bound wood at her back. She had covered the four kilometres from the enclosed bridge to her sanctum and cell without pausing or letting her thoughts touch what she had seen.

  What she thought she had seen. In the Order of the Argent Shroud they knew that visions both sublime and terrible were real, but they also knew that such things could come from the mind itself, pulled up from some dirty corner by fatigue, or guilt, or sin.

  In the dark she let out her breath and allowed her head to fall.

  She wished that her sisters were there. She wished that she had not been left alone to wither in this place.

  She raised her head. She would need to purge and purify her mind and body. She was a Sororitas and, even alone, she was her Order, her will the will of all who shared the Sisterhood.

  Moving by memory she lit the first of the candles and set it on the high stone shelf near the door. The room was octagonal, the walls bare granite and the ceiling an image of the Emperor as wisdom, looking down with a face as old and creased as hers. The bare stone slab that was her bed gleamed coldly under the candle light. Pious-XVI sat in his wall niche beside her armour and weapon alcove. The servitor twitched awake as the light touched his eye lenses, and he lurched towards her.

  ‘Mistress,’ he droned, his voice crackling with static.

  He had been a soldier in the Helix 401st; young, pious and brave. A heretek bullet had torn half his head away on Geldic, as he rushed to lift the banner of the Argent Shroud as its bearer died. For his piety the Sororitas had honoured him by granting that he serve a Sister of the Order until his flesh gave out.

  Agata held out her arms, deactivated her armour and let Pious-XVI strip the plates from her. She pulled a white tunic over the bodyglove she wore under the battleplate, and began the rituals of cleansing her body and mind for rest.

  Calm eluded her as she stretched and breathed. Thoughts crowded back into her head: the burning sun of the solar cultists crumpling as it fell, Claudia’s cold eyes, blood spotting the stone floor in her wake…

  You are troubled, she thought. These things are a mirror to your weaknesses. You must be pure. Where there is doubt there must only be faith…

  The sound pulled her from the practice. For a second she had heard a low scuffling close by. She looked at Pious-XVI, but the servitor was bent over a plate of her armour, half-machine hands polishing the silver with a black cloth.

  She closed her eyes and bent into the ritual stretch again.

  Her head snapped up again.

  ‘Mistress?’ Pious-XVI turned to look at her.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Quiet,’ she said. The sound had been louder.

  She slowed her breathing and listened, allowing her senses to fill her awareness as she willed the sound of her breath and blood to silence.

  And there it was again, softer but more persistent. It sounded like feathers brushing or beating against something hard. She almost relaxed.

  A bird must have come into the chamber. With the Season of Night approaching, the carrion-wings that roosted on the towers and spires were sometimes drawn to the warmth within the buildings.

  The sound came again, and she began to move towards it – a tapestry-hung niche that held the stone bowl and water jug for her ablutions.

  How had the bird got in and behind the tapestry? The sound fluttered loud for a second, and Agata saw the tapestry twitch. She reached out. Golden-threaded chalices glowed in the faded red fabric. She slid the tapestry aside.

  The bird exploded out of the space beyond. Black feathers scattered, as wings beat at her and shrieking cries filled her ears. She felt claws tear at her cheeks. The reek of spoiled meat and burned feathers filled her nose. She raised her hands and battered it away. The creature tumbled to the ground with a shriek. She had an instant to glimpse something ragged and black, clawed and feathered and furred, before it leapt at her again.

  There was an echoing bang. The creature burst apart and dropped to the floor. Torn feathers hung in the air. Pious-XVI lowered his left arm. The barrel of the still-smoking shot-cannon folded back into his steel- and-brass forearm.

  ‘Thank you,’ she breathed.

  ‘I live to serve,’ he droned.

  Agata shook herself and stepped closer to the remains of the creature. Most of it had been reduced to tatters and red slime, but she could make out feathers hanging off the bones of three wings. There was a beak too, and a row of cataract-misted eyes. The smell coming off it was pungent and sweet, like the smell of vomit masked by rose water.

  She thought of the Sign Seekers and what she had seen on the bridge after Claudia had fled. She shivered, still staring at the remains.

  ‘What action do you wish me to take, mistress?’ asked Pious-XVI.

  ‘Scribe and carry a message to Bishop Xilita – I beg a private audience with her at her earliest convenience.’

  ‘It shall be so. And the remaining matter of the creature I terminated?’

  Agata did not answer for a second. She could not ignore this.

  ‘Burn it,’ she said.

  SAINT’S TEARS

  ‘We’re coming for you, runt!’ The cry went up amongst the children, and Acia ran. They were older than her, older and faster, but she knew the runs between the shanties better than any of them.

  This was her world. She had not been in the Western Pilgrim Drift long, but it had been enough for her to find every small gap between rotting boards and every hole in every rusted roof. She could run from the Sellers’ Way all the way to the first stones of the monastery proper and never touch the ground. She could slide down the forgotten drain sinks and drop into the cold dark of the burial chambers. Most people didn’t even know they were there, but Acia had found them, and that was what made the Western Drift hers.

  There were four pilgrim drifts, each of them clinging to the margin of the Monastery of the Last Candle, made and remade from whatever the pilgrims could get hold of. In the long unhonoured past, the orders cloistered in the monastery had welcomed pilgrims, but then Dominicus Prime had become a stepping stone world on the Coreward Pilgrimage. Millions from the trailing sectors came to the monastic world every year on their way to the high and holy world of Ophelia VII. Many went to the great Crow Complex in the planet’s south, but some went north, to the edge of the light where the Monastery of the Last Candle had stood for eight millennia. Penniless, most that had got that far never left. And so the drifts grew, every one a warren of alleys and tiny dwellings, piled up over and next to each other. Reeking and riddled with disease, most that lived in the sight of the monastery died there and never even saw the shrines they had crossed space, and then a world, to see. Some loathed their fate, others drew solace from how close they were to such a holy place. Most simply endured.

  Acia swerved around a corner, and vaulted a cart piled with rubble being dragged by two women. Cries followed her, but she ran on. The chase was still not done. Behind her the fastest of the pack ran into the alley. The cart tipped over. One of the women picked up one of the scattered lumps of rockcrete and threw it at the passing tide of children.

  ‘Runt! We are going to get you!’

  Acia laughed, grabbed onto the end of a metal beam sticking out of the alley wall and swung herself up, reached higher, gripped the top of the roof, and jumped. A hand snatched at her ankle, she laughed, turned and spat down into the face of the hunter, then she was up and racing across the rooftop world. The ice wind blasted down at her, but she was faster than it. That was why her grandfather had said she had made it on the march from the south – because she was fast enough to outrun the cold. That was a lie, she knew. She had lived because her parents had given their food to her and made her eat it.

  A boy had made it to the rooftops, but he had ripped his hand on the roof edge and was bleeding. Red stains dappled on the grey of his shift. Acia wondered if the cut would kill him, like it had Tola, who
se leg had gone black after she had cut it on a stone shard.

  ‘Runt!’ The cry rose as more followed the bleeding boy over the edge of the roof.

  Adults were out in the alleys and on the plank gantries now, shouting at them with curses that grandfather would say were enough to see them denied the Emperor’s blessing. Acia knew why they shouted. A chase was not just a nuisance, it was a waste. A chase broke things that then needed fixing, wasted energy that was needed to make ready for the real cold and dark when the Season of Night came, wasted energy that could not be replaced. But to Acia and the children of the drift, the thrill was worth the shouts and the ache in already aching bellies.

  She reached a drop between two roofs and glanced down as she was about to jump.

  And stopped.

  She stared for a second.

  A girl thundered over the roof behind her, reaching for Acia with raw glee on her face.

  ‘Got you!’

  Acia glanced around and shrugged free of the grasp.

  ‘Look,’ she shouted. The girl reached for her again, so Acia ducked and shouted at the girl, pointing down into the gap between the roofs. ‘Look!’ The older girl glanced as she lunged at Acia. And stopped.

  ‘What…?’

  The crowd of other children were coming up behind them, still intent on their quarry. Acia ignored them and crouched down, ready to swing over the roof edge into the gap. The other girl grabbed her shoulder.

  ‘You’re not going to–’

  ‘Just going to look closer.’ Acia twisted and dropped so that she was hanging by her fingers from the edge of the roof. ‘Come on,’ she said, and let go.

  She hit the ground. It was a long drop, but she was used to them and rolled as she landed. The space she had dropped into was like a cleft between two buildings, just wide enough for an adult to stand and stretch their arms out. That happened sometimes in the drifts, bits of space were just caught between walls as they were built. Someone once had taken the trouble to pave the ground with lumps of stone. Blown refuse had gathered at the edges. One of the walls had once been decorated with yellow paint in spreading lines, like the rays of the sun. There was an opening at one end that led to an alley. It was so narrow that an adult would only just be able to get through, and unless you knew where it led, completely unnoticeable. And where it led was a shrine, because at the far end, mortared into a low wall, was a stone face.